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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAOB

The MKcaUed delicious, intangible joke FromHsfuet

" Good enough I " he chuckled 15

Every girl like Cornelia had to go South «ometime between

November and March 33

An elderly dame . • 43

A much-freckled messenger-boy appeared dragging an exceed-
ingly obstreperous fox-terrier 61

Wen I 'II be hanged/' growled Stanton, "if I'm going to be
strung by any boy i " • • 73

Some poor old worn-out story-writer • . • • 101

" Maybe she is — 'colored, ' " he velunteered at last . . • • • Z13

" Oh I Don't I loek--gorgeoas I " she ttammered . • • . . 139

** What T " cried Stanton, plunging forward in his chair • . . 159

Cornelia's mother answered this time 169

He unbuckled the straps of his suitcase and turned the cover

backward on the floor •• 185

"Are you a good boy?" she asked •••••••*'••• aof

"Iff only Carl/' he said ••••... M9

« •■•I**

SfTBoajf Make-SBelUpt

MOLLY MAKE-KE?Uj|yp

• •

• • •• • •_ •

.• -

THE morning was as dark and cold
as city snow could make it — a diogy
whirl at the window; a smoky gust
through the fire-place; a shadow black
as a bear's cave under the table. Noth-
ing in all the cavernous room, loomed
really warm or familiar except a glass of
stale water, and a vapid, half-eaten
grape-fruit.

Packed into his pudgy pillows like a
fragile piece of china instead of a human
being Carl Stanton lay and cursed the/
brutal Northern winter.

Between his sturdy, restive shoulders'
the rheumatism snarled and clawed like
tome utterly frenzied animal trying to

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

gnaw-gnaw-gnaw its way out Along
the tortured hollow of his back a red-hot
plaster fumed and mulled and sucked at

i'.^the pain: like. a hideously poisoned fang
/ :!;:t:^^g;to gfAw-gyiaw-gnaw its way in.

* ' Worse ' tHan this ; every four or five
minutes an agony as miserably comic a$
a crashing blow on one's crazy bone went
jarring and shuddering through hia
whole abnormally vibrant system.

In Stanton's swollen fingers Cornelia's
large, crisp letter rustled not softly like
a lady's skirts but bleakly as an ice-
storm in December woods.

Cornelia's whole angular handwriting,
in fact, was not at all unlike a thicket of
twigs stripped from root to branch of
every possible softening leaf.

" Dear Carl " crackled the letter, «« In spite
of your unpleasant tantrum yesterday, because
I would not kiss you good-by in the presence
of my mother, I am good-natured enough you

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

see to write you a good-by letter after all
But I certainly will not promise to write you
daily, so kindly do not tease me any more
about it In the first place, you understand
that I greatly dislike letter-writing. In the
second place you know Jacksonville quite as
well as I do, so there is no use whatsoever in
wasting either my time or yours in purely
geographical descriptions. And in the third
place, you ought to be bright enough to com-
prehend by this time just what I think about
* love-letters ' anyway. I have told you once
that I love you, and that ought to be enough.
People like myself do not change. I may
not talk quite as much as other people, but
when I once say a thing I mean itt You
will never have cause, I assure you, to worry
about my fidelity.

" I will honestly try to write you every Sun-
day these next six weeks, but I am not willing
to literally promise even that. Mother indeed
thinks that we ought not to write very much
at all until our engagement is formally an-
nounced.

"Trusting that your rheumatism is very
much better this morning, I am

" Hastily yours,

'< CORNXUA.

)

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

** P. S. Apropos of your sentimental passion
for letters, I enclose a ridiculous circular
which was handed to me yesterday at the
VWoman's Exchange. You had better in*
vestigate it It seems to be rather your kind.**

As the letter fluttered out of his hand
Stanton closed his eyes with a twitch of
physical suffering. Then he picked up
the letter again and scrutinized it very
carefully from the severe silver mono-
gram to the huge gothic signature, but he
could not find one single thing that he
was looking for ; — ^not a nourishing para-
graph; not a stimulating sentence; not
even so much as one small sweet-flavored
word that was worth filching out of the
prosy t«xt to tuck away in the podcets of
his mind for his memory to munch on in
its hungry hours. Now everybody who
knows anjTthing at all knows perfectly
well that even a business letter does not
deserve the paper which it is written on
unless it contains at least one significant

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

phrase that is worth waking up in the
night to remember and think about And
as to the Lover who does not write signifi-
cant phrases — ^Heaven help the young •
mate who finds himself thus mismated
to so spiritually commonplace a nature!
BafHed, perplexed, strangely uneasy,
Stanton lay and studied the barren page
before him. Then suddenly his poor
heart puckered up like a persimmon with
the ghastly, grim shock which a man ex-
periences when he realizes for the first
time that the woman whom he loves is
not shy, but — stingy.

With snow and gloom and pain and
loneliness the rest of the day dragged by.
Hour after hour, helpless, hopeless, ut-
terly impotent as though Time itself were
bleeding to death, the minutes bubbled and
dripped from the old wooden clock. By
noon the room was as murky as dish-
water, and Stanton lay and fretted in the

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

messy, sudsy snow-light like a forgotteii
knife or spoon until the janitor wandered
casually in about three o'clock and wrung
a piercing little wisp of flame out of the
electric-light bulb over the sick man's
head, and raised him clumsily out of his
soggy pillows and fed him indolently with
a sad, thin soup. Worst of all, four
times in the dreadful interim between
breakfast and supper the postman's thrilly
footsteps soared up the long metallic
stairway like an ecstatically towering
high-note, only to flat off discordantly at
Stanton's door without even so much as
a one-cent advertisement issuing from the
letter-slide.—— And there would be
thirty or forty more days just like this
the doctor had assured him ; and G^melia
had said that— perhaps, if she felt like it
^-she would write — ^six — ^times.

Then Night came down like the f eath-
•rjr aoot of a smoky lamp, and smutted
"" 8

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVS

first the bedquilt, then the hearth-rug;
flien the window-seat, and then at last th#
great, stormy, faraway outside workL
' But sleep did not come. Oh, no I Noth-
ing new came at all except that partictt«\
larly wretched, itching type of insomnia \
which seems to rip away from one*s body \
the whole kind, protecting skin and ex*
pose all the raw, ticklish fretwork of
nerves to the mercy of a gritty blanket or
a wrinkled sheet Pain came too, in its
most brutally high night-tide ; and sweaty
like the smother of furs in summer; and
thirst like the scrape of hot sand-paper;
and chill like the clammy horror of raw
fish. Then, just as the mawkish cold,
gray dawn came nosing over the house-
tops, and the poor fellow's mind had
reached the point where the slam of ai
window or the ripping creak of a floor-
board would have shattered his brittle
nerves into a thousand cursing tortures-^

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

fKen tKat teasing, tantalizing little friend
of all rheumatic invalids — the Morning
Nap— came swooping down upon him like
a sponge and wiped out of his face every **
single bit of the sharp, precious evidence
of pain which he had been accumulating
so laboriously all night long to present to
the Doctor as an incontestable argument
in favor of an opiate.

Whiter than his rumpled bed, but fresh-
ened and brightened and deceptively free
from pain, he woke at last to find the
pleasant yellow sunshine mottling his
dingy carpet like a tortoise-shell cat. In-
stinctively with his first yawny return

to consciousness he reached back under

his pillow for Cornelia's letter. '

Out of the stiff envelope fluttered in-
stead the tiny circular to which Comelial
had referred so scathingly.

It was a dainty bit of gray Japanese
tisiue with the crimson-inked text glow*

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

ing gaily across it Something in the
whole color scheme and the riotously
quirky typography suggested at once the
audaciously original work of some young
art student who was fairly splashing her
way along the road to financial independ-
ence, if not to fame. And this is what
the little circular said, flushing redder
and redder and redder with each ingenu-
ous statement:

THE SERIAL-LETTER COMPANY.

Comfort and entertainment Furnished for
InvalidSi Travelers, and all Lonely People.

Real Letters

from

Imaginary Persons.

Reliable as your Daily Paper. Fanci-
ful as your Favorite Story Magazine^
Personal as a Message from your
Best Friend. Offering all the Satis-
faction of receiving Letters with no
Possible Obligation or even Oppoitt
tnnity of Answering Them.

MOLLY MAK&BELIEVE

SAMPLE UST.

LUten from « Japanese Fairy. (Especially accept&bia
BHrteklj. to a Sick ChUd. Fr»

gnmt with Incense and
Sandal Wood. Vivid
with purple and orange
and scaiiet Lavishly
interspersed with the
most adorable Japanese
toys that you ever saw
in your life.)

Lttten f rem a Litdt SoA. (Very sturdy. V«^

Weekly. ^>unky. Sligh^ p9^

fane.)

Lilteis from a Litde Daughter. (Quaint Old-Fash-
Wtekly. ione4. Daintily Dreamy

Mostly about Dolls.)

LttteiB from a Banda>Sea PI- (Luxuriantly tropical

late. Salter than the Sea.

Monthly. Sharper than Coral.

Unmitigatedly murder
ous. Altogether blood-
curdling.)

Lstten from f^ Gray-Plush (Sure to please Na
SquirreL ture Lovers of Eithei

Sex. Pungent with
wood-lore. Prowly,

Scampery. Deliciouily
wild. Apt to be ]u.<4 a
little bit messy perhaps
with roots and ieaveb
Kidnutti

MOLLY MAK&BEUEVE

^Letters from Your Favorite (Biograpbically coa

Historical Character. sbtent Historically

Fortnightly, reasonable. Most viva.

dousljr human. Really
unique.)

Love LetteiB. (Three grades t Shy.

Daily. Medium. Very Intense.)

In ordering letters kindly state approximate agei
prevalent tastes»«-and in case of invalidism^ the pre-
iumable severity of illness. For price list, etc* refer
io opposite page. Address all communications to
Serial Letter Co. Box, etc., etc.

As Stanton finished reading the last
soletim business detail he crumpled up the
circular into a little gray wad, and
pressed his blond head back into the pil-
lows and grinned and grinned

"Good enough I •' he chuckled. ''If
Cornelia won't write to me there seem to
be lots of other congenial souls who will
/^-cannibals and rodents and kiddies. All
the same — ** he ruminated suddenly:
^ All the same 1*11 wagcr that there's an
awfully decent little brain working away
behind all that ted ink and nodsease**

MOLLY MAKErBELIEVK

Still grinning he conjured up the vision
of some grim-faced spinster-subscriber in
a desolate country town starting out at
last for the first time in her life, with reaV
cheery self-importance, rain or shine, to
join the laughing, jostling, deliciously
human Saturday night crowd at the vil-
lage post-office — ^herself the only person
whose expected letter never failed to
come I From Squirrel or Pirate or Hop-
ping Hottentot — what did it matter to
her? Just the envelope alone was worth
the price of the subscription. How the
pink-cheeked high school girls elbowed
each other to get a peep at the post-mark !
How the — . Better still, perhaps some
hopelessly unpopular man in a dingy city
office would go running up the last steps
just a little, wee bit faster — say the second
and fourth Mondays in the month — ^be-
cause of even a bought, made-up letter
from Mary Queen of Scots that he feiew

"Good enough!" li

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MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

absolutely without slip or blunder would
be waiting there for him on his dusty, ink-
stained desk among all the litter of bills
and invoices concerning — shoe leather.
Whether *Mary Queen of Scots' prat-
tled pertly of ancient English politics, or
whimpered piteously about dull-colored
modem fashions — ^what did it matter so
long as the letter came, and smelled of
faded fleur-de-lis— or of Damley's to*
bacco smoke ? Altogether pleased by the
vividness of both these pictures Stanton
turned quite amiably to his breakfast and
gulped down a lukewarm bowl of miDc
without half his usual complaint

It was almost noon before his troubles
commenced again. Then like a raging
hot tide, the pain began in the soft, fleshy
soles of his feet and mounted up inch by
inch through the calves of his legs,
through his aching thighs, through his
tortured back, through his cringing neck*

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

till the whole reeking misery seemed to
foam and froth in his brain in an utter
frenzy of furious resentment Again the
day dragged by with maddening monot-
ony and loneliness. Again the clock
mocked him, and the postman shirked
him, and the janitor forgot him. Again
the big, black night came crowding down
and stung him and smothered him into a
countless number of new torments.

Again the treacherous Morning Nap
wiped out all traces of the pain and left
the doctor still mercilessly obdurate on the
•ubject of an opiate.

And Cornelia did not write.

Not tiU the fifth day did a brief Kttle
Southern note arrive informing him of
the ordinary vital truths concerning a
comfortable journey, and expressing a
chaste hope that he would not forget her.
Not even surprise, not even curiosity,
lenpted Stanton to wade twice through

MOLLY MAKErBELIEVE

the fashionable, angular handwriting.
Dully impersonal, bleak as the shadow ol
a brown leaf across a block of gray gran-
ite, plainly — ^unforgivably — ^written with
ink and ink only, the stupid, loveless
page slipped through his fingers to the
floor.

After the long waiting and the fretful
impatience of the past few days there
were only two plausible ways in which to
treat such a letter. One way was with
anger. One way was with amusement
With conscientious effort Stanton finally
summoned a real smile to his lips.

Stretching out perilously from his snug
bed he gathered the waste-basket into his
arms and commenced to dig in it like a
sportive terrien After a messy minute
or two he successfully excavated tht
crumpled little gray tissue circular and
smoothed it out carefully on his humped-
vp Imees. The expression in his eyes all

MOLLY MAK£-B£LI£VE

ihe time was quite a curious mixture o(
mischief and malice and rheumatism.

*' After all '* he reasoned, out of one
comer of his mouth, " After all, perhaps
I have misjudged Cornelia. Maybe it's
only that she really doesn't know just
what a love-letter ought to be like."

Then with a slobbering fountain-pen
and a few exclamations he proceeded to
write out a rather large check and a very
small note.

"To THE Serial-Letter Co.** he ad-
dressed himself brazenly. ** For the enclosed
check — ^which you will notice doubles the
amount of your advertised price — kindly
enter my name for a six weeks' special
'edition de luxe* subscription to one of
your love-letter serials. (Any old ardor
that comes most convenient) Approximate
age of victim : 32. Business status : rubber
broker. Prevalent tastes : To be able to sit
up and eat and drink and smoke and go to
the office the way other fellows do. Nature
of Ulness: The meanest kind of rheu*

MOLLY MAK&BELIEVE

matism. Kindly deliver said letters as early
and often as possible !

" Very truly yours, etc."

Sorrowfully then for a moment he
studied the depleted balance in his check-
book, "Of course " he argued, not un-
guiltily, *' Of course that check was just
the amount that I was planning to spend
on a turquoise-studded belt for Cornelia's
birthday; but if Cornelia's brains really
0eed more adorning than does her body
—if this special investment, in fact, will
mean more to both of us in the long run
than a dozen turquoise belts .^*

Big and bland and blond and beautiful,
Cornelia's physical personality loomed up
suddenly in his memory — so big, in fact,
80 bland, so blond, so splendidly beautiful, '
that he realized abruptly with a strange
little tucked feeling in his heart that the
question of Cornelia's ** brains" had
never yet occurred to him. Pushing the

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

thought impatiently aside he sank badt
luxuriantly again into his pillows, and
grinned without any perceptible effort at
all as he planned adroitly how he would
paste the Serial Love Letters one by one
into the gaudiest looking scrap-book that
he could find and present it to Cornelia on
her birthday as a text-book for the
•* newly engaged" girl. And he hoped
and prayed with all his heart that every
individual letter would be printed with
crimson ink on a violet-scented page and
would fairly reek from date to signature
with all the joyous, ecstatic silliness that
graces cither an old-fashioned novel or a
modern breach-of-promise suit

So, quite worn out at last with all this
unwonted excitement, he drowsed off to
sleep for as long as ten minutes and
dreamed that he was a — ^bigamist

The next day and the next night were
ttale and mean and musty with a drizzling

1221

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

winter rain. But the following morning
crashed inconsiderately into the world'af
limp face like a snowball spiked witl^
icicles. Gasping for breath and cnmch«
ing for foothold the sidewalk people
t)reasted the gritty cold. Puckered with
diills and goose-flesh, the fireside people
huddled and sneezed around their respect-
ive hearths. Shivering like the ague be-
tween his cotton-flannel blankets, Stan-
ton's courage fairly raced the mercury in
its downward course. By noon his teeth
were chattering like a mouthful of
cracked ice. By night the sob in his
thirsty throat was like a lump of salt and
snow. But nothing out-doors or in, from
morning till night, was half as wretchedly
cold and clammy as the rapidly congeal-
ing hot-water bottle that slopped and gur-
gled between his aching shoulders.

It was just after supper when a me«-
ienger boy blurted in from the frigid half

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

with a great gust of cold and a long paste*
board box and a letter.

Frowning with perplexity Stanton's
clumsy fingers finally dislodged from the
box a big, soft blanket-wrapper with an
astonishingly strange, blurry pattern of
green and red against a somber back-
ground of rusty black. With increasing
amazement he picked up the accompany-
ing letter and scanned it hastily.

" Dear Lad/' the letter began quite inti-
mately. But it was not signed "G>r*
nclia''. It was signed *' MoUy 'M

' 1

^ •

/ I /

■' !

S«

TURNING nervously back to the
box's wrapping-paper Stanton read
once more the perfectly plain, perfectly
unmistakable name and address, — ^his
own, repeated in absolute duplicate on the
envelope. Quicker than his mental com-
prehension mere physical embarrassment
began to flush across his cheek-bones*
Then suddenly the* whole truth dawned on
him: The first installment of his Serial*
Love-Letter had arrived

** But I thought — thought it would be
type-written," he stammered miserably
to himself. ** I thought it woiild be a-«
be a — hectographed kind of a thing.
iWliy» hang it all, it's a real letter I And
urben I doubled my check and calkd lor

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

a special edition de luxe^ — I wasn't sit-
ting up on my hind legs begging for real
' presents I **

But " Dear Lad " persisted the pleas-
ant, round, almost childish handwriting:

••Dear Lad,

" I could have cried yesterday when I go!
3rour letter telling me how sick you were.
Yes! — But crying wouldn't * comfy' you
any, would it? So just to send you right-
off -quick something to prove that I'm think-
ing of you, here's a great, rollicking woolly
wrapper to keep you snug and warm this
very night. I wonder if it would interest
you any at all to know that it is made out of
a most larksome Outlaw up on my grand-
father's sweet-meadowed farm, — ^a really,
truly Black Sheep that I've raised all my
own sweaters and mittens on for the past
five years. Only it takes two whole seasons
lo raise a blanket-wrapper, so please be
Awfully much delighted with it. And oh,
Mr. Sick Boy, when you look at the funny,
blurry colors, couldn't you just please pre-
tend that the tmge of green Is the flavor ol

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

pleasant pastures, and that the streak of red
is the Cardinal Flower that blazed along
the edge of the noisy brook?
** Goodby till to-morrow,

** Molly.**

With a face so altogether crowded
with astonishment that there was no
room left In it for pain, Stanton's lame
fingers reached out inquisitively and pat-
ted the w^rm, woolly fabric.

" Nice old Lamb-y *' he acknowledged
judicially.

Then suddenly around the comers of
his under lip a little balky smile began to
flicker^

** Of course FU save the letter for Cor-
nelia,** he protested, "but no ene could
reallj expect me to paste such % scrump-
tious blanket-wrapper into a scrap-book.

Laboriously wriggling his thinness and
his coldness into the black sheep's bxuri-
Mt* irresponsible fleece, a bulging »ide-

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVB

pocket in the wrapper bruised his hlpi
Reaching down very temperisMy to the
pocket he drew forth a small lace-trimmed
handkerchief knotted pudgily across a
brimming handful of fir-balsam needles.
Like a scorching hot August breeze the
magic, woodsy fragrance crinkled through
his nostrils.

" These people certainly know how to
play the game all right/' he reasoned
whimsically, noting even the consistent
little letter *' M '* embroidered in one cor-
ner of the handkerchief.

Then, because he was really very sick
and really very tired, he snuggled down
into the new blessed warmth and turned
his gaunt cheek to the pillow and cupped
his hand for sleep like a drowsy child
with its nose and mouth burrowed eagerly
down into the expectant draught. But
the cup did not fill. — ^Yet scented deep in
hit curved, empty, balsam-scented fingers

MOLLY MAKErBELIEVE

lurked — somehow — somewhere — the
:dregs of a wonderful dream: Boyhood,
with the hot, sweet flutter of summer
woods, and the pillowing warmth of the
«oft, sunbaked earth, and the crackle of a
twig, and the call of a bird, and the drone
of a bee, and the great blue, blue mystery
^ the sky glinting down through a green-
latticed canopy overhead.

For the first time in a whole, cruel tor^
tuous week he actually smiled his way into
his morning nap.

When he woke again both the sun and
the Doctor were staring pleasantly into
his face.

**You look better!** said the Doctor.
*• And more than that you don't look half
JO * cussed cross *.**

•* Sure," grinned Stanton, with all the
deceptive, undauntable optimism of the
Just-Awakened.

^Nevertheless,** continued the Doctor

MOLLY MAK&BELIEVE

more soberlv.. " there ought to be some-
body a trifle more interested in you than'
the janitor to look after your fodd and
your medicine and all that I'm going to
send you a nurse."

•* Oh, no I '' gasped Stanton. *' I don't
need one! And frankly — I can't afford
one." Shy as a girl, his eyes eluded the
doctor's frank stare. " You see," he ex-
plained diffidently ; *' you see, I'm just en-
gaged to be married — ^and though business
is fairly good and all that — my being
away from the office six or eight weeks
is going to cut like the deuce into
my commissions — and roses cost such a
horrid price last Fall — ^and there seems
to be a game law on diamonds this year;
they practically fine you for buying them*
and ''

The Doctor's face brightened irrek^
irantly. ** Is she a Boston young lady? **
be queried

MOLLY MAKErBELIEVE

^ Oh, yes," beamed Stanton.

*" Good ! " said the Doctor. " Then ol
course she can keep some sort of an eye
on you. Fd like to see her. Td like to
talk with her — ^give her just a few general
directions as it were.'*

A flush deeper than any mere love-em-
barrassment spread suddenly over Stan-
ton's face.

** She isn*t here," he acknowledged
with barely analyzable mortification.
** She's just gone south."

'' Just gone south ? " repeated the Doc-
tor. *'You don't mean — ^since youVe
been sick ? "

Stanton nodded with a rather wobbly
grin, and the Doctor changed the subject
abruptly, and busied himself quickly with
the least bad -tasting medicine that he
could concoct.

Then left alone once more with a short
breakfast and a long morning, Stantoit

MOLLY MAKE-BEUEVE

fank back gradually into a depression hsk^^
finitely deeper than his pillows, in which
he seemed to realize with bitter centric
tion that in some strange, unintentional
manner his purely innocent, matter-of«
fact statement that Cornelia ''had just
gone south'' had assumed the gigantk
disloyalty of a public proclamation that
the lady of his choice was not quite up to
the accepted standard of feminine intelli-
gence or affections, though to save his
life he could not recall any single glum
word or gloomy gesture that could pos-
sibly have conveyed any such erroneous
impression to the Doctor.

*' Why Cornelia had to go South,'* he
reasoned conscientiously. "Every girl
like Cornelia had to go South sometime
between November and March. How
could any mere man even hope to keep
rare, choice, exquisite creatures like that
cooped up in a slushy, snowy New £ng«

•t»

• • • * *

• • • ••*

• ••

• c

« b • W 6

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

land city — ^when all the bright, gorgeous,
rose-blooming South was waiting for
them with open arms? 'Open arms 'I
Apparently it was only 'climates* that
were allowed any such privileges with
girls like Cornelia. Yet, after all, wasn't
it just exactly that very quality of serene,
dignified aloofness that had attracted him
first to Cornelia among the score of freer-
mannered girls of his acquaintance ? "

Glumly reverting to his morning paper,
he began to read and reread with dogfged
persistence each item of politics and for-
eign news — each gibbering advertisement.
At noon the postman dropped some
kind of a message through the slit in the
»door, but the plainly discernible green
one-cent stamp forbade any possible hope
that It was a letter from the South. At
four o'clock again someone thrust an of-
fensive pink gas bill through the letter-
•lide. At six o'clock Stanton stubbornly

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

shut his eyes up perfectly tight and muf*
fled his ears in the pillow so that he would
not even know whether the postman came
or not. The only thing that finally roused
him to plain, grown-up sense again was
the joggle of the janitor's foot kicking
mercilessly against the bed.

" Here's your supper," growled the jan-
itor.

On the bare tin tray, tucked in between
the cup of gruel and the slice of toast
loomed an envelope — sl real, rather fat-
looking envelope. Instantly from Stan-
ton's mind vanished every conceivable sad
thought concerning Cornelia. With his
heart thumping like the heart of any
love-sick school girl, he reached out and
grabbed what he supposed was Cornelia's
letter.

But it was post-marked, ''Boston";
and the handwriting was quite plainly the
handwriting of The Serial-Letter Co.

MOLLY MAKE-BKUEVS

Mttttering an exclamation that was not
altogether pretty he threw the letter as far
as he could throw it out into the middle
of the floor, and turning bade to his sup-
per began to crunch his toast furiously
like a dragon crunchii^ bones.

At nme o'clodc he was still awake. 'M
ten o^clock he was still awake. At efevm
o'clock he was still awake. At twehre
o'clock he was still awake . • • At one
o'clock he was almost crazy. By quarter
past one, as though fairly hypnotized, his
eyes began to rivet themselves on the lit-
tle bright spot in the rug where the " seri-
al-letter " lay gleaming whitely in a beam
of electric light frcmi the street Finally,
in one supreme, childish impulse of
petulant curiosity, he scrambled shiver-
ingly out of his blanks wilil xasoKf
''O ^h*s'* and "O-u-c-h-V' recap-
tured the letter, and tooK it growfiogly
back to kis warm bed.

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

Worn out quite as much with the grind«
ing monotony of his rheumatic pains as
with their actual acuteness, the new dis"*
comfort of straining his eyes under the
feeble rays of his night-light seemed
almost a pleasant diversion.

The envelope was certainly fat As he
ripped it open, three or four folded papers
like sleeping-powders, all duly numbered,
" I A. M.," " 2 A. M.,'* '' 3 A. M.,'* " 4
A. M." fell out of it. With increasing
inquisitiveness he drew forth the letter
itself.

"Dear Honey,*' said the letter quite
boldly. Absurd as it was, the phrase
crinkled Stanton's heart just the merest
trifle.

*' Dear Honey :

"There are so many things about your
sickness that worry me. Yes there are I I
worry about your pain. I worry about the
horrid food that you're probably getting.

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

I worry about the coldness of your room.
But most of anything in the world I worry
about your sleeplessness. Of course you
don't sleep! That's the trouble with rheu-
matism. It's such an old Night-Nagger.
Now do you know what Vm going to do to
you? I'm going to evolve myself into a
sort of a Rheumatic Nights Entertainment
— for the sole and explicit purpose of trying
to while away some of your long, dark
hours. Because if you've simply got to stay
awake all night long and think — ^you might
just as well be thinking about ME, Carl
Stanton. What? Do you dare smile and
suggest for a moment that just because of
the Absence between us I cannot make my-
self vivid to you ? Ho I Silly boy I Don't
you know that the plainest sort of black ink
throbs more than some blood — and the touch
of the softest hand is a harsh caress com-
pared to the touch of a reasonably shrewd/*
pen ? Here — ^now, I say — this very moment :\
Lift this letter of mine to your face, and
swear — if you're honestly able to— that you
can't smell the rose in my hairl A cinna-
mon rose, would you say — a yellow, flat-
faced cinnamon rose? Not quite so lus-

MOLLY MAK&BEUEVE

ciontly fragrai^ as Hioac m jom grand-
tnotfior's July garden ? A tr^ paler? Per*
cepdbly cooler? Something foiled iitta
HoainiM, perhapa, behind brittle glaaa^ on*
der barren winter moonshine? And yet —
A-h-h I Hear me laugh I Yon didn't reaUy
mean to let yourself lift the page and ^ttdl
k. did you? But what did I tell you?

^ I must n't waste too mudi tune, ihoogh,
on this nonsense. What I really wanted to
•ay to you was : Here are four — not * sleep-
ing potions \ but waking potions — ^just foor
silly little bits of news for you to think about
at one o'ckxdc, and two, and three — and four,
' if you happen to be so miserable to-nig^ as
to be awake even then.

•* With my tove.

•Moixr.'*

KVhimsicanj, Stanton rummaged
around in the creases of the bed-spread
and extricated the little folded paper
marked, ^ No. i o'clock" The news in it
was utterly briel

"* Mj hair is red/' was aH &at It an-
nranced.

• - — •■«

> '»'«•

MOLLY MAKE-BILIETX

WH^ a sniff of amttsenmtt Stastm col^
hffBitd again into his pillows. For abnosl
an koQT tfien he hj considering solemnlf
irittfher a red-headed girl could possibly
be preCt J. By two o'clock he had finaHy
visualized quite a strikii^, Juno-esciue
type of beauty with a figure about the
Tegs^. height of Cornelia's, and blue eyes
perhaps just a trifle hazier and more n^s-
chieToas.

But the little folded paper marked,
''No, 2 o'clock/' announced destruc-
tively: '^ My eye$ are brown. 21n4 I im
Uttlc-

Wi A an absmtfly resolute Intention to

pity the game '' every tut as geouiiKly
as Miss Serial-Letter Co. was playing it,
Staolott TtitsSntd quite heroically from
openk^ tbe Aird dose ol news untfl at
least two big, resooant oii^ dodes had fai-
Sistad that Ibe hour was ripe. E^ that
tine tiie grin in his fiaee w^ dmosC

411

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

bright enough of itself to illuminate any
ordinary page.

" I am lame/* confided the third mes-
sage somewhat depressingly. Then snug-
glingly in parenthesis like the tickle of lips
against his ear whispered the one phrase :
"My picture is in the fourth paper,—
if you should happen still to be awake at
four o'clock/*

Where now was Stanton's boasted sense
of honor concerning the ethics of playing
the game according to directions ? ** Wait
a whole hour to see what Molly looked
like ? Well he guessed not ! " Fumbling
frantically under his pillow and across the
medicine stand he began to search for the
missing *' No. 4 o'clock." Quite out of
breath, at last he discovered it lying on
flie floor a whole arm's length away from
the bed. Only with a really acute stab
of pain did he finally succeed in reaching
it Then with fingers fairly trembling

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

effort^ he opened forth and disclosed
a tiny snap-shot photograph of a grim-
jawed, scrawny-necked, much be-specta-
cled elderly dame with a huge gray pom*
pfadour.

*' Stung ! " said Stanton.

Rheumatism or anger, or something,
buzzed in his heart like a bee the rest of
the night.

Fortunately in the very first mail the
next morning a postal-card came from
Cornelia — such a pretty postal-card too,
with a bright-colored picture of an in-
ordinately *' riggy " looking ostrich star-
ing over a neat wire fence at an eager
group of unmistakably Northern tourists.
Underneath the picture was written in
Cornelia's own precious hand the heart-
thrilling information :

*'We went to see the Ostrich F'arm
ycst«*day. It was really very interest-
tog. C^

FOR quite a long time Stanton lay and
considered the matter judicially
from every possible point of view. " It
would have been rather pleasant," he
mused " to know who ' we ' were/' Al-
most childishly his face cuddled into the
pillow. "She might at least have told
me the name of the ostrich ! *' he smiled
grimly.

Thus quite utterly denied any nourish-
ing Cornelia-flavored food for his
thoughts, his hungry mind reverted very
naturally to the tantalizing, evasive,
sweetly spicy fragrance of the 'MoHy*
episode — before the reaDy dreadful ph<^o-
graph of the unhappy spinster-lady had
burst upon his blinking vision.

MOLLY Make-believe

Scowlingly he picked up the picture and
stared and stared at it Certainly it was
grim. But even from its grimness ema-
nated the same faint, mysterious odor of
cinnamon roses that lurked in the accom-
panying letter. " There's some dreadful
mistake somewhere/' he insisted. Then
suddenly he began to laugh, and reaching
out once more for pen and paper, in-
scribed his second letter and his first com-
plaint to the Serial-Letter Co.

♦ " To the Serial-Letter Co.,** he wrote
sternly, with many ferocious tremors of
dignity and rheumatism.

** Kindly allow me to call attention lo the
fact that in my recent order of the i8th
inst., the specifications distinctly stated
Move-letters', and not any correspondence
whatsoever, — ^no matter how exhilarating
from either a * Gray-Plush Squirrel* or a

* Banda Sea Pirate ' as evidenced by enclosed
photograph which I am hereby returning.
Please refund money at once or forward me

MOLLV MAlOS-fiELlEVK

without delay a consistent photogrzflh of a
* special edition de luxe * girU

" Very truly yours."

The letter was mailed by the janitor
long before noon. Even as late as eleven
o'clock that night Stanton was still hope-
fully expecting an answer. Nor was he
altogether disappointed. Just before mid-
night a messenger boy appeared with a
fair-sized manilla envelope, quite stiff and
important looking.

* Oh, please, Sir,*^ said tKe enclosed let-
ter, *Oh, please, Sir, we cannot refund
your subscription money because — ^we have
spent it. But if you will <Mily be patient,
we feel quite certain that you will be alto-
gether satisfied in the long run with the
material offered you. As for the photo-
graph recently forwarded to you, kindly
accept our apologies for a very clumsy mis-
take made here in the office. Do any of
these other types suit you better? Kindly
mark selection and return all pictures at
your earliest convenience."

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVB

Before the messenger boy's astonished
interest Stanton spread out on the bed all
around him a dozen soft sepia-colored
photographs of a dozen different girls.
Stately in satin, or simple in gingham, or
deliciously hoydenish in fishing-dothes,
they challenged his surprised attention.
Blonde, brunette, tall, short, posing with
wistful tenderness in the flickering glow
of an open fire, or smiling frankly out of
a purely conventional vignette — ^they one
and all defied him to choose between
them.

''OhI OhI" laughed Stanton to him-
•elf, " Am I to try and separate her pic-
ture from eleven pictures of her friends I
So that's the game, is it? Well, I guess
*notI Does she think I'm going to risk
choosing a tom-boy girl if the gentle little
creature with the pansies is really herself?
Or suppose she truly is the enchanting
little tom4x)y, would she probably write

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

me any more nice funny letters if I aol«
emnly selected her sentimental^ moony-
looking friend at the heavily draped win-
dow?"

Craftily he returned all the pictures im-
marked to the envelope, and changing the
address hurried the messenger boy off
to remail it. Just this little note, hastily
scribbled in pencil went with the envelope :

** Dear Serial-Letter Co. :

" The pictures are not altogether satisfac-
tory. It isn't a * type * that I am looking for,
but a definite likeness of * Molly ' herself.
Kindly rectify the mistake without further
delay! or REFUND THE MONEY."

Almost all the rest of the night he
amused himself chuckling to think how
the terrible threat about refunding the
money would confuse and conquer the ex- *
travagant little Art Student.

But it was his own hands that did the
nervous trembling when he opened the

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

Hg express package that arrived the next
evening, just as his tiresome porridge sup-
per was finished.

" Ah, Sweetheart—*' said the dainty note
tucked inside the package — ^"Ah, Sweet-
heart, the little god of love be praised for
one true lover — ^Yourself I So it is a pic-
ture of me that you want? The real met
The truly met No mere pink and white
likeness ? No actual proof even of * seared
and yellow age'? No curly-haired, co-
quettish attractiveness that tiie shampoo-
lady and the photograph-man trapped me
into for that one single second? No de-
ceptive profile of the best side of my face—
and I, perhaps, blind in the other eye? Not
even a fair, honest, every-day portrait of
my father's and mother's composite features
—but a picture of myself! Hooray for
you I A picture, then, not of my physiog*
nomy, but of my personality. Very well,
sir. Here is the portrait — true to the
/life — in this great, clumsy, conglomerate
package of articles that represent — ^perhaps
— ^not even so much the prosy, literal tilings
ifaat I am, as the much more illuminating

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

tnd rignificant things that / would like
to be. It's what we would Mike to be*
that really tells most about us, isn't it,
Carl Stanton? The brown that I have to
wear talks loudly enough, for instance, about
tfie color of my complexion, but the forbid-
den pink that I most crave whispers infin-
itely more intimately concerning the color oi
my spirit. And as to my Face — am I really
obliged to have a face? Oh, no— ol
* Songs without words ' are surely the only
songs in the world that are packed to the
last lilting note with utterly limitless mean-
ings. So in these ' letters without faces * I
cast myself quite serenely upon the mercy of
your imagination.

"What's that you say? That I've sim-
ply got to have a face ? Oh, dam ! — ^well,
do your worst Conjure up for me then,
here and now, any sort of features what-
soever that please your fancy. Only, Man
of Mine, just remember this in your im-
aginings : Gift me with Beauty if you like,
or gift me with Brains, but do not make the
crttde masculine mistake of gifting me widil
botfi. Thought furrows faces you koow,
and after Adolescence only Inanity retamt

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

Its heavenly smoothness. Beauty even at
, its worst is a gorgeously perfect, flower-
sprinkled lawn over which the most ordi-
nary, every-day errands of life cannot cross
without scarring. And brains at their best
are only a ploughed field teeming always
and forever with the worries of incalculable
harvests. Make me a little pretty, if you
like, and a little wise, but not too much of
either, if you value the verities of your Vis-
ion. There ! I say : do your worst ! Make
me that face, and that face only, that you
need the most in all this big, lonesome
world : food for your heart, or fragrance for
your nostrils. Only, one face or another—
I insist upon having red hair!

" Molly."

With his lower lip twisted oddly under
the bite of his strong white teeth, Stanton
began to unwrap the various packages that
comprised the large bundle. If it was a
" portrait " it certainly represented a puz-
zle-picture.

First there was a small, flat-footed scar-
let slipper with a fluflfy gold toe to it

MOLLY MAKE^BELIEYE

Definitely feminine. Definitely small. So
much for that I Then there was a sling-
shot, ferociously stubby, and rather con-
fosii^y boyish. After that, round and
flat and tantalizing as an empty plate, the
phonograph disc of a totally unfamiliar
song— "The Sea Gull's Cry": a clue
surely to neither age nor sex, but indic-
ative possibly of musical preference or
mere individual temperament. After
that, a tiny geographical globe, with Kip-
ling's phi

** For to admire an' for to see,
For to bc'old this world so wide-
It never done no good to me,
Bat I can't drop it if I tried I "—

written slantingly in very black ink across
both hemispheres. Then an empty purse
— ^with a hole in it ; a silver-embroidered
gauntlet such as horsemen wear on the
Mexican frontier; a white table-doily
pttrtly esibroidered with silky blue forget-

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

me-nots — the threaded needle still jabbed
in the work — ^and the small thimble, Stan-
ton could have sworn, still warm from
the snuggle of somebody's finger. Last
of all, a fat and formidable edition of
Robert Browning's poems; a tiny black
domino-mask, such as masqueraders wear,
and a shimmering gilt picture frame in-
closing a pert yet not irreverent hand-
made adaptation of a certain portion of
St. Paul's epistle to the Corinthians:

"Though I speak with the tongues of
men and of angels and have not a Sense of
Humor, I am become as sounding brass, or
a tinkling symbol. And though I have the
gift of Prophecy — ^and all knowledge — ^so
that I could remove Mountains, and have
not a Sense of Humor, I am nothing, And
though I bestow all my Groods to feed the
poor, and though I give my body to be
burned, and have not a Sense of Humor it
profiteth me nothing.

"A sense of Humor suffereth long, and
is kind A Sense of Htunor envieth not

S5I

MOLLY MAK&BELIEVS

A Sense of Humor vatinteth not itself — it
not puflfed up. Doth not behave itself Un-
'Seemly, seeketh not its own, is not easily
provoked, thinketh no evil — ^Beareth all
things, believeth all things, hopeth all things,
endureth all things; A Sense of Humor
never faileth. But whether there be un-
pleasant prophecies they shall fail, whether
there be scolding tongues they shall cease,
whether there be unfortunate knowledge it
shall vanish away. When I was a fault-
finding child I spake as a fault-finding child,
I understood as a fault-finding child, — ^but
when I became a woman I put away fault-
finding things.

"And now abideth faith, hope, charity,
these three. But the greatest of these is a
sense of humor t"

With a little chuckle of amusement not
altogether devoid of a very definite con-
sciousness of being teased, Stanton spread
all the articles out on the bed-spread be-
fore him and tried to piece them together
like the fragments of any other jig-saw
puzzle. Was the young lady as intelfcc-

MOLLY MAK.fi^B£Ll£Vfi

tual as the Robert Browning poems sug-
gested, or did she mean simply to imply
that she wished she were? And did the
tom-boyish sling-shot fit by any possible
chance with the dainty, feminine scrap
of domestic embroidery? And was the
empty purse supposed to be especially
significant of an inordinate fondness for
phonograph music — or what ?

Pondering, puzzling, fretting, fussing,
he dozed oflF to sleep at last before he even
knew that it was almost morning! And
when he finally woke again he found the
Doctor laughing at him because he lay
holding a scarlet slipper in his hand.

89^

THE next night, very, very late, in a
furious riot of wind and snow and
sleet, a clerk from the drug-store just
around the comer appeared with a per-
fectly huge hot-water bottle fairly sizzling
and bubbling with warmth and relief for
aching rheumatic backs.

" Well, where in thunder — 'f " groaned
Stanton out of his cold and pain and
misery.

Search meV said the drug clerk.

The order and the money for it came in
the last mail this evening. * Kindly de-
liver largest-sized hot-water bottle, boil-
ing hot, to Mr. Carl Stanton, • . •
a 1. 30 to-night.'"

** 00-w I '' gasped Stanton. ** 0-u-c-hT

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

G-e^ I '' then, " Oh, I wish I could purrj •*
as he settled cautiotisly back at last to
toast his pains against the blessed, scordi-*
ing heat. " Most girls," he reasoned
with surprising interest, "would have
sent ice cold violets shrouded in tissue
paper. Now, how does this special girl
know — Oh, Ouch! 0-u-c-h! 0-u-c-h — i

— ^t ^y ! " he crooned himself to sleq>.

The next night just at supper-time a
much-freckled messenger-boy appeared
dragging an exceedingly obstreperous
fox-terrier on the end of a dangerously
frayed leash. Planting himself firmly on
the rug in the middle of the room, with
the faintest gleam of saucy pink tongue
showing between his teeth, the little beast
sat and defied the entire situation. Noth-
ing apparently but the correspondence
concerning the situation was actually
transferable from the freckled messenger,
boy to Stanton himself.

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

" Oh, dear Lad/' said the tiny note, ** I
forgot to tell you my real name, didn't II
^-Well, my last name and the dog's first i
name are just the same. Funny, isn't it?}
(You'll find it in the back of almost any
dictionary.)

" With love,

" Molly.

** P. S, Just turn the puppy out in the
morning and he'll go home all right of his
own accord."

With his own pink tongue showing just
a trifle between his teeth, Stanton lay for
a moment and watched the dog on the
rug. Cocking his small, keen, white head
from one tippy angle to another, the lit-
tle terrier returned the stare with an ex-
pression that was altogether and unmis-
takably mirthful. " Oh, it's a jolly little
beggar, isn't it ? " said Stanton. " Come
here, sir! " Only a suddenly pointed ear*
acknowledged the summons. The dog
himself did not budge. '^Come here, I
say I ** Stanton repeated with harsh per-

• •••

• •

• m
• •

•
•
•
•

• •

•
■» •

• • •• t •

•
«
•

• ^ • • •

•
•
•
•

•
•
•

>
• *

••-

•

•••

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

emptoriness. Palpably the little dog
"winked at him. Then in succession the
Iktie dog dodged adroitly a knife, a
spoon, a copy of Browning's poems, and
several other sizable articles from the
table close to Stanton's elbow. Nothing
but the dictionary seemed too big to
throw. Finally with a grin that could not
be disguised even from the dog, Stanton
began to rummage with eye and hand
through the intricate back pages of the
dictionary.

"You silly little fool," he said.
** Won't you mind unless you are spoken
to by name ? "

" Aaron— AWdel— Abel— Abiathar—^'
he began to read out with petulant curios-
ity," Baldwin — Barachias — Bruno (Oh,
>hang !) — Cadwallader — Caesar — Caleb
(What nonsense!) Ephraim — Erasmus
(How could a girl be named anything like
that I) Gabriel — Gerard — Gershom

^53

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

(Imagine whistling a dog to the name of
GershomI) Hannibal — Hezekiah — Hosea
(Oh, Hell!) " Stolidly with unheedful, ^
drooping eai^ the little fox-terrier re-
sumed his seat on the rug. " Ichabod—
Jabez — Jodb," Stanton's voice persisted,
experimentally. By nine o'clock, in all
possible variations of accent and intona-
tion, he had quite completely exhausted
the alphabetical list as far as " K." and
the little dog was blinking himself to sleep
on the far side of the room. Something
about the dog's nodding contentment
started Stanton's mouth to yawning and
for almost an hour he lay in the lovely,
restful consciousness of being at least half
asleep. But at ten o'clock he roused up
sharply and resumed the task at hand,
which seemed suddenly to have assumed
really vital importance. "Laban — ^Lor-
enzo— Marcellus," he began again in a
loudi^ clear, compelling voice, **Mcre»

'64

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

aith— ** (Did the little dog stir? Did he
sit up?) "Meredith? Meredith?^' The
little dog barked. Something in Stanton's
brain flashed. "It is * Merry* for the
dog? *' he quizzed. " Here, MERRY! *'
In another instant the little creature had
leaped upon the foot of his bed, and was
talking away at a great rate with all sorts
of ecstatic grunts and growls. Stanton's
hand went out abnost shyly to the dog's
head. " So it's ' Molly Meredith '," he
mused. But after all there was no reason
to be shy about it. It was the dogfs head
he was stroking.

Tied to the little dog's collar when he
went home the next morning was a tiny,
inconspicuous tag that said "That was
easy! The pup's name — ^and yours — is
* Meredith.' Funny name for a dog but
nice for a girl."

The Serial-Letter Co.'s answers were
always prompt, even though perplexing.

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

•'Dear Lad," came this special answer,
•• You are quite right about tiie dog. And
I compliment you heartily on your shrewd-
ness. But I must confess,— even though it
makes you very angry with me, that I have
deceived you absolutely concerning my own
name. Will you forgive me utterly if I
hereby promise never to deceive you again?
Why what could I possibly, possibly do with
a great solemn name like ' Meredith ' ? My
truly name. Sir, my really, truly, honest-
injun name is ' Molly Make-Believe '. Don't
you know the funny little old song about
* Molly Make-Believe ' ? Oh, surely you do :

'*' Molly, Molly Make-Bclicve.

Keep to your play if you would not grieved
For Molly-Mine here's a hint for you.
Things that are true are apt to be blue ! '

"Now you remember it, don't you?
Then there's something about

•* * Molly, Molly Make-a-Smile,
Wear it, swear it all the while.
Long as your lips are framed for a joke.
Who can prove that your heart is broke?'

" Don't you love that ' is broke ' I Then
diere's the last verse — ^my favorite:

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

'Molly, Molly Makc-a-Beau,
Make him of mist or make him of snow.
Long as your DREAM stays fine and fair»
Molly, Molly what do you care I ' *'

"Well, m wager that her name is
' Meredith ' just the same/* vowed Stan-
ton, "and she's probably madder than
scat to think that I hit it right"

Whether the daily overtures from the
Serial-Letter Co. proved to be dogs or
love-letters or hot-water bottles or funny
old songs, it was reasonably evident that
something unique was practically guaran-
teed to happen every single, individual
night of the six weeks' subscription con*
tract. Like a youngster's joyous dream
of chronic Christmas Eves, this realiza-
tion alone was enough to put an ab-
surdly delicious thrill of expectancy into
any invalid's otherwise prosy thoughts.

Yet the next bit of attention from the
Serial-Letter Co. did not please Stanton

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

one half as much as it embarrassed
him.

Wandering socially into the room from
his own apartments below, a young law-
yer friend of Stanton's had only just
seated himself on the foot of Stanton's
bed when an expressman also arrived with
two large pasteboard hat-boxes which he
straightway dumped on the bed between
the two men with the laconic message that
he would call for them again in the morn-
ing.

" Heaven preserve me I " gasped Stan-
ton. "What is this?"

Fearsomely out of the smaller of the
two boxes he lifted with much rustling
snarl of tissue paper a woman's brown
fur-hat, — ^very soft, very fluffy, inordi-
nately jaunty with a blush-pink rose nest-'
ling deep in the fur. Out of the other
box, twice as large, twice as rustly,
flaunted a green velvet cavalier^s hat^ with

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

a green ostrich feather as long as a man's
arm drooping languidly off the brim.

" Holy Cat ! " said Stanton,

Pinned to the green hat's crown was a
tiny note. The handwriting at least was
pleasantly familiar by this time.

"Oh, I say!** cried the lawyer de-
lightedly.

With a desperately painful effort at
nonchalance, Stanton shoved his right fist
into the brown hat and his left fist into the
green one, and raised them quizzically
from the bed.

" Darned — good-looking — hats/' he
stammered.

" Oh, I say I " repeated the lawyer with
accumulative delight.

Crimson to the tip of his ears, Stanton
rolled his eyes frantically towards the lit-
tle note.

" She sent *em up just to sHow 'em to
mc," he quoted wildly. " Just 'cause I'm

6gt .

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

laid up so and can't get out on the streets
to see the styles for myself. — ^And IVe got
to choose between them for her I " he ejac-
ulated. ** She says she can't decide alone
which one to keep ! "

" Bully for her I " cried the lawyer, sur-
prisingly, slapping his knee. " The ctm-
ning little girl I "

Speechless with astonishment, Stanton
lay and watched his visitor, then ** Well,
which one would you choose? " he asked
with unmistakable relief.

The lawyer took the hats and scanned
thtm carefully. ** Let — ^me — see *' he con-
sidered. " Her hair is so blond '*

" No, it's red ! " snapped Stanton.

With perfect courtesy the lawyer swal-
towed his mistake. " Oh, excuse me," he
said. ** I forgot. But with her height — *'

''She hasn't any height," groaned
Stanton. " I tell you she's litdc."

^ Choose to nut yourself," said diie knc*

MOIXY MAKE-BELIEVE

ycr coolly. He himself had admired Cor*
nelia from afar off.

flhe next night, to Stanton's mixed ^
feelings of relief and disappointment the
" surprise " seemed to consist in the fact
that nothing happened at all. Fully
until midnight the sense of relief com«
forted him utterly. But some time after
midnight, his hungry mind, like a House-
pet robbed of an accustomed meal, be-
gan to wake and fret and stalk around
ferociously through all the long, empty,
aching, early morning hours, searching
for something novel to think about.

By supper-time the next evening he was
m an irritable mood that made him fairly
* dutch the special delivery letter out of
the postman's hand. It was rather a ti^
tantalizing littte letter, too. AH it said
was,

** To*night, Dearest, until one o'clodc, ki
a eabbage-colored gown all shimmer]^ yriAi

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

green and blue and September frost-lights,
I'm going to sit up by my white birch-wood
fire and read aloud to you. Yes ! Honest-
Injun! And out of Browning, too. Did
you notice your copy was marked? What
shall I read to you ? Shall it be

* * If I could have that little head of hers
Painted upon a background of pale gold.'

'*or

'Shall I sonnet^sing you about myself?
Do I live in a house you would like to see?'

••or

' I am a Painter who cannot paint,

No end to all I cannot do.

Yet do one thing at least I can.
Love a man, or hate a man!.'

or just

'Escape me?
Never,
Beloved !
While I am I, and you are you!*

'•Oh, Honey! Won't it be fun? Just
you and I, perhaps, in all this Big City,
sitting up and thinking about each other.

• 4 •

• •

•

• %

« «

•

•• •

• •

• J

•

••»

• •

•

• • f

• •

• ^-f *

• . e * «

« w

•• I •

• r

•. •••

•

. . •

• • -

* w •

MOLLY M4KE.BELIEVE

Can you smell the white birch smoke in this
letter?"

Almost unconsciously Stanton raised
the page to his face. Unmistakably, up
from the paper rose the strong, vivid
scent — of a briar-wood pipe.

" Well rU be hanged," growled Stan-
ton, *' if Tm going to be strung by any
boy ! " Out of all proportion the incident
irritated him.

But when, the next evening, a perfectly
tremendous bunch of yellow jonquils ar-
rived with a penciled line suggesting, *' If
you'll put these solid gold posies in your
window to-morrow morning at eight o'-
clock, so rU surely know just which win-
dow is yours. Til look up— when I
go past,'* Stanton most peremptorily or-
dered the janitor to display the bouquet
as ornately as possible along the narrow
window-sill of the biggest window that
faced the street. Then all through the

HOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

flight he lay dozing and waking intermit*
tently, with a lovely, scared feeling in the
{»t of his stomach that something really^'
rather exciting was about to happen. By
surely half-past seven he rose laboriously
from his bed, huddled himself into his
black-sheep wrapper and settled himself
down as warmly as could be expected,
dose to the draughty edge of the window.

••T ITTLE and lame and red-haired

JL^ and brown-eyed," he kept repeat-
ing to himself.

Old people and young people, cab-
drivers and jaunty young girls, and fat
blue policeman, looked up, one and all
with quick-brightening faces att the
really gorgeous Spring-like flame of
jonquils, but in a whole chilly, wearisome
hour the only red-haired person that
passed was an Irish setter puppy, and the
only lame person was a wooden-legged
beggar.

Cold and disgusted as he was, Stantoil
could not altogether help laughing at bis
own discomforture*

"Why^hang that little giri! She
ought to be s-p-a-n-k-e-d," he chuckled as
he climbed back into his tiresome bed.

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

Then as though to reward his ultimate
good-nature the very next mail brought
him a letter from Cornelia, and rather a
remarkable letter too, as in addition to
the usual impersonal comments on the
weather and the tennis and the annual
orange crop, there was actually one whole,
individual, intimate sentence that distin-
guished the letter as having been intended
solely for him rather than for Cornelia's
dressmaker or her coachman's invalid
daughter, or her own youngest brother.
This was the sentence :

" Really, Carl, you don't know how glad
I am that in spite of all your foolish objec-
tions, I kept to my original purpose of not
announcing my engagement until after my
Southern trip. You've no idea what a big
difference it makes in a girl's good time at
a great hotel like this/'

This sentence surely gave Stanton a
good deal of food for his day's thoughts*

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

but the mental indigestion that ensued was
not altogether pleasant.

Not until evening did his mood brighten
again. Then —

" Lad of Mine," whispered Molly's gen-
tler letter. " Lad of Mine, how blond
your hair is! — Even across the chin-
tickling tops of those yellow jonquils this
morning, I almost laughed to see the blond,
blond shine of you. — Some day I'm going
to stroke that hair. (Yes!)

" P. S. The Little Dog came home all
right"

With a gasp of d^may Stanton sat up
abruptly in bed and tried to revisualize
3very single, individual pedestrian who
had passed his window in the vicinity of
eight o'clock that morning. " She evi-
dently isn't lame at all," he argued, " or
little, or red-haired, or anything. Prob- '
ably her name isn't Molly, and presum-
ably it isn't even * Meredith.* But at least
she did go by : And is my hair so very

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

bionil?'' he asked himself suddenlj.
Against all intention his mouth began to
^prance a little at the corners. 4

As soon as he could possibly summou
the janitor^ he despatched his third note
to the Serial-Letter Co., but this one bore
a distinctly sealed inner envelope, directed,
*' For Molly. Personal.'* And the mes-
^ge in it, though brief was utterly to the
point " Couldn't you please tell a fellow
who you are ? ''

But by the conventional bed-time hour
the next night he wished most heartily
that he had not been so inquisitive, for
the only entertainment that came to him
at all was a jonquil-colored telegram
wraming him—

*' Where the apple reddens do not pry,
Lest we lose our Bden— 70Q and I."

The couplet was quite unfamiliar to
Stanton, but it rhymed sickeningly
Hirotigh his brain all night lot^ like the

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVJC

acmadousness of an over-drawn bank ae-
coont

It was the very next morning after this
that an the Boston papers flaunted Cor-
iielia's aristocratic young portrait on their
front pages with the striking, large-type
announcement that "One of Boston's
Fairest Debutantes Makes a Daring Res-
cue in Florida waters. Hotel Cook CajH
sized from Row Boat Owes His Life to
the Pluck and Endurance— etc*, etc/*

With a great sob in his throat and every
pulse pounding, Stanton lay and read the
infinite details of the really splendid story;
a group of young girls dallying on the
Pier; a shrill cry from the bay; the sud-
den panic-'stricken helplessness of the
spectators, and then with equal sudden-
ness the plunge of a single, feminine fig-
ure into the water; the long hard swim;
the fttriotts strugs^k; the final victory.
Stingingly, as thot^ it had been &irfy

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

branded into his eyes, he saw the vision
of Cornelia's heroic young face battling
above the horrible, dragging-down depths
of the bay. The bravery, the risk, the
ghastly chances of a less fortunate end-
ing, sent shiver after shiver through his
already tortured senses. All the loving
thoughts in his nature fairly leaped to do
tribute to Cornelia. " Yes f *' he reasoned,
** Cornelia was made like that ! No mat-
ter what the cost to herself — no matter
what was tfie price — Cornelia would
never, never fail to do her duty! " When
he thought of the weary, lagging, riskful
weeks that were still to ensue before he
should actually see Cornelia again, he felt
as though he should go utterly mad. The
letter that he wrote to Cornelia that night
was like a letter written in a man's own
heart-blood. His hand trembled so that
he could scarcely hold the pen.
Cornelia did not like the letter. She

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

.said so frankly. The letter did not seem
to her quite "nice." "Certainly/' she
attested, " it was not exactly the sort of
letter that one would like to show one's
mother." Then, in a palpably conscien-
tious effort to be kind as well as just, she
began to prattle inkily again about the
pleasant, warm, sunny weather. Her only
comment on saving the drowning man
was the mere phrase that she was very
glad that she had learned to be a good
swimmer. Never indeed since her absence
had she spoken of missing Stanton. Not
even now, after what was inevitably a
heart-racking adventure, did she yield her
lover one single iota of the information
which he had a lover's right to claim.
Had she been frightened, for instance —
way down in the bottom of that serene
heart of hers had she been frightened ? In
the ensuing desperate struggle for life had
ahe struggled just one little tiny bit

MOLLY MAK&^EUEVE

harder because Stanton was in that life?
Now, in the dreadful, unstrung reaction
of the adventure, did her whole nature
waken and yearn and cry out for that one
heart in all the world that belonged to
her? Plainly, by her silence in the mat-
ter, she did not intend to share an3rthing
as intimate even as her fear of death with
the man whom she claimed to love.

It was just this last touch of deliber-
ate, selfish aloofness that startled Stan-
ton's thoughts with the one persistent,
brutally nagging question: After all,
was a woman's undeniably glorious abil-
ity to save a drowning man the supreme,
requisite of a happy marriage?

Day by day, night by night, hour by
hour, minute by minute, the qUisticm be-
gan to dig into Stanton's brain, Arowmg
much dust and confusion into brain-cor*
ncrs otherwise perfectly orderly and sweet
and deafeu

MOLLY MAK&BEUEVE

Wedc by week, grown suddenly zmA
morbidly analytical, he watched for Cor-
nelia's letters with increasingly passionate .
hopefulness, and met each fresh disap-
pointment with increasingly passionate
resentment. Except for the Serial-Let-
ter Co/s ingeniously varied attentions
there was practically nothing to help him
make either day or night bearable. More
and more Cornelia's infrequent letters
suggested exquisitely painted empty
dishes offered to a starving person. More
and more " Molly's " whimsical messages
fed him and nourished him and joyously
pleased him like some nonsensically fash-
ioned candy-box that yet proved brim-
ming full of real food for a real man
;Fight as he would against it, he began to
cherish a sense of furious annoyance that
Cornelia's failure to provide for him had
so thrust him out, as it were, to feed
among strangers. With frowmng pir«

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

plcxity and real worry he felt the ting-
ling, vivid consciousness of Molly's per-
sonality begin to permeate and impreg-
nate his whole nature. Yet when he tried
to acknowledge and thereby cancel his
personal sense of obligation to this
"Molly'* by writing an exceptionally
civil note of appreciation to the Serial-
Letter Co., the Serial-Letter Co. answered
him tersely —

" Pray do not thank us for the jonquils,
—blanket-wrapper, etc., etc. Surely they
are merely presents from yourself to your-
self. It is your money that bought
them.''

And when he had replied briefly,
•' Well, thank you for your brains, then I "*
the ''company" had persisted witH un-
due sharpness, " Don't thank us for our
brains. Brains are our business.*'

VI.

XT was one day just about the end of
the fifth week that poor Stanton's
long-accumulated, long-suppressed per-
plexity blew up noisily just like any other
kind of steam.

It was the first day, too, throughout all
his illness that he had made even the
slightest pretext of being up and about.
Slippered if not booted, blanket- wrappered
if not coated, shaven at least, if not shorn,
he had established himself fairly com-
fortably, late in the afternoon, at his big
study-table close to the fire, where, in his
low Morris chair, with his books and his
papers and his lamp close at hand, he had
started out once more to try and solve the

MOLLY M AKS-BIUSVE

absurd little problem that coof rcmted
Only an occasional twitch of pain ia kis
^shotilder-blade^ or an intermitteot ahudder
of nerves along his spine had inttrn:9)ted
in any possible way his almost frenzied
absorption in his subject

Here at the desk very soon after sup<
ter-time the Doctor had joined him, and
with an unusual expression of leisure and
friendliness had settled down loUingly on
the other side of the fireplace with his
great square-toed shoes nudging the
bright, brassy edge of the fender, and his
big riieerschaum pipe pufiing the whole
bleak room most deliciously, tantalia^ngly
foU of forbidden tobacco smoke. It was
a comfortable, warm place to chat. (The
talk had begun with politics, drifted a
Kttle way toward the architecture of ser- 1
tx9l new city buildings, hovered a moment
over ^ marriage of soine nftutual frieod,
and then languished utterly.

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVB

' [With a sudden narrowing-eyed 8hrtwd-
ncss the Doctor turned and watched an
tmwonted flicker of worry on Stanfcm's
forehead.

•* What's bothering you, Stanton? '* hn
asked, quickly. ** Surely you're not wor-
rying any more about your themM*
tism?"

"No,'* said Stanton. "It— Isn't— •
rheumatism/'

For an instant the two m«i's eyes heM
each other, and then Stanton began to
laugh a trifle uneasily.

Doctor," he asked quite abruptly^

Doctor, do you believe that any possible
conditions could exist — ^that would roake
it justifiable for a man to show a wo-
man's love-letter to another man ? "

**Why — ^y-e-s," said the Doctor cau-
tiously, *' I tibink so. There might
eireiinii<mnGe9 **

StiU without any percef^iUe <

€4

>♦:• . *

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

Stanton laughed again, and reaching out»
picked up a folded sheet of paper from th«
; table and handed it to the Doctor.

"Read that, will you?" he asked.
"And read it out loud/*

With a slight protest of diffidence, the
Doctor unfolded the paper, scanned the
page for an instant, and began slowly.

" Carl of Mine.

"There's one thing I forgot to tell you.
When you go to buy my engagement ring
— I don't want any ! No I I'd rather have
two wedding-rings instead — ^two perfectly
plain gold wedding-rings. And the ring
for my passive left hahd I want inscribed,
* To Be a Sweetness More Desired than
Spring ! ' and the ring for my active right
hand I want inscribed^ * His Soul to Keep I *
/Just that.

"And you needn't bother to write me
^tfiat you don't understand, because you are
not expected to understand. It is not Man's
prerogative to understand. But you are
perfectly welcome if you want, to call me
crazy, because I am — utterly crazy on just

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

tme subject, and thafs you. Why, Be*
joved, if "

"Here!" cried Stanton suddenly^
reaching out and grabbing the letter.
" Here ! You needn't read any more I '*
His cheeks were crimson.

The Doctor's eyes focused sharply on
his face. " That girl loves you," said the
Doctor tersely. For a moment then the
Doctor's lips puffed silently at his pipe,
until at last with an almost bashful ges-
ture, he cried out abruptly ; " Stanton,
somehow I feel as though I owed you an
apology, or rather, owed your fiancee one.
Somehow when ^ou told me that day that
your young lady had gone gadding oflf to
Florida and — ^left you alone with your/
sickness, why I thought — well, most evi-
dently I have misjudged her."

Stanton's throat gave a little gasp, then
silenced again. He bit his lips furiously
as though to hold back an exclamation*

"'\

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

Then suddenly the whole perplexin|^ truth
burst forth from him.

** That isn't from my fiancee I ^ fie cried
•ut. "That's just a professional love-
letter. I buy them by the dozen, — ^so
much a week." Reaching back under his
pillow he extricated another letter.
^This is from my fiancee," he said.
•'Read it Yes, do."

" Aloud ? " gasped the Doctor.

Stanton nodded. His forehead was wet
with sweat

•• Dear CxRt,

•*The weather is still very warm. I am
riding horseback almost every morning,
however, and playing tennis almost every
afternoon. There seem to be an excep-
tionally large number of interesting people
here this winter. In regard to the list of
names you sent me for the wedding, really,
Carl, I do not see how I can possibly ac-
commodate so many of your friends without
seriously curtailing my own list After all
you must remember that it is the bride's

MOLLY MAKE-BEUE^TB

day, not tiie groom's. And In Tegurd to
your question as to whetlier we expect to
\be home for Christmas and could I possibly
arrange to spend Christmas Day with yon
— ^why, Carl, you are perfectly preposterous I
Of course it is very kind of you to invite
me and all that, but how could mother and
I possibly come to your rooms when our en-
gagement is not even announced ? And be-
sides there is going to be a very smart dance
here Christmas Eve that I particularly wish
to attend. And there are plenty of Christ-
inases ccmiing for you and me.

" Cordially yours,

*P. S. Mother and I hope thai your
rheittnatiMn is much better.''

"That's the girl who loves me,** add
Stanton not unhumorously. Then sud-
denly all the muscles around his mouth
tigfatmed like the facial muscles of a man
who is hammering something. "I mean
it ! '• he insisted. *' I mean it — absolutely.
That's the— girl — ^who — ^loves — ^me I "

Silently the two men looked at eadb

MOLLY MAK&BELIEVB

other for a second. Then they hoih bttrit
out laughing.

•*0h, yes,** said Stanton at last, •'I
know it*s funny. That's just the troubte
with It. It's altogether too funny."

Out of a book on the table beside him
he drew the thin gray and crimson circt^-
lar of The Serial-Letter Co. and handed
It to the Doctor. Then after a moment's
rummaging around on the floor beside
him, he produced with some difficulty a
long, pasteboard box fairly bulging with
papers and things.

*• These are the — communications from
my make-believe girl/* he confessed grin-
ningly. *'0h, of course they're not all
letters/* he hurried to explain. " Here's
a book on South America. — I*m a rubber
broker, you know, and of course I've al-
ways been keen enough about the New
England end of my job, but I've never
thought anything so very special about the

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

South American end of it But that girl
—that make-believe girl, I mean* — ^insist*
that I ought to know all about South'
America, so she sent me this book; and
it's corking reading, too — ^all about funny
fhings like eating monkeys and parrots
and toasted gtiinea-pigs — and sleeping
outdoors in black jungle-nights under
mosquito netting, mind you, as a protec-
tion against prowling panthers. — ^And
here's a queer little newspaper cutting that
she sent me one blizzardy Sunday tell-
ing all about some big violin maker who
always went out into the forests himself
and chose his violin woods from the north
side of the trees. Casual little item.
You don't think anything about it at thcj
moment. It probably isn't true. And^
to save your soul you couldn't tell what
kind of trees violins are made out of,
anyway. But I'll wager that never again
Will you wake in the night to listen to the

MOLLY MAK£-B£LIEVS

wind Without thinking of the great storm*
!tos8ed» moaning, groaning, slow-tough*
. enkig forest trees — ^learning to be violissl
.' ^ m :• And here's a funny little old
silver porringer that she gave me, she
•ays, to make my * old gray gruel taste
shinier/ And down at the bottom of the
bowl — the ruthless little pirate— she's
taken a knife or a pin or something and
scratched the words, 'Excellent Child!'
•—But you know I never noticed that part
of it at aU till last week. You see I've
only been eating down to the bottom of
the bowl just about a week. — ^And here's
a catalogue of a boy's school, four or five
catalogues in fact that she sent me one
evening and asked me if I please wouldn't
look them over right away and help her
|decide where to send her little brother.
Why, man, it took me almost all night I
If you get the athletics you want in one
idiool, then likelier than not you slip up

-tr-^^ - . ^.aaAiim^MMi..^MMMifiliaiM

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEYS

on Ibc manual training, and if ihty*rt g^
in; to schedule eight hours a week for

' Latin, why where in Creation ? **

Shrugging his shoulders as thougii to
shrug aside absolutely any possible further

responsibility concerning, ** little brother,**
Stanton began to dig down deeper into
the box. Then suddenly all the grin camt
back to his face.

** And here are some sample wall papei%
that she sent me for *our house*/* hfe
confided, flushing. " What do you think
of that bronze one there with the peacock
feathers? — say, old man, think of a H-
brary*«-^nd a cannel coal fire— «nd a big
mahogany desk — ^and a red-haired girl
sitting against that paper I And this sun-
shiny tint for a breakfast-room isn't half
bad, is it?-^Oh yes, and here are the
time-tables, and all the pink and blue mapsi<
about Colorado and Arizona and the
^ Painted Desert \ If we can * afford it/

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVB

the writes, she ^ wishes we cotild go io the
Painted Desert on our wedding trip/—
But really, old man, you know it isn't
such a frightfully expensive journey*
.Why if you leave New York on Wednes*

day Oh, hang it all! What's the

use of showing you any more of this non-
sense ? " he finished abruptly.

With brutal haste he started cramming
everything bade into place. " It is noth-
ing but nonsense 1 " he acknowledged con-
scientiously; "nothing in the world ex-
cept a boxftd of make-believe thoughts
from a make-believe girL And here," he
finished resolutely, *' are my own fiancee's
thoughts — concerning me."

Out of his blanket-wrapper pocket he
produced and spread out before the Doc-
tor's eyes five thin letters and a postal-
card.

** Not exactly thoughts concerning you,
even so, are they? ^ quizzed the Doclon

MOLLY MAKE-BELIkVE

Stanton began to grin again. ** WcH
thoughts concerning the weather, then—
if that suits you any better/*

Twice the Doctor swallowed audi-
bly. Then, "But it's hardly fair—is
it — ^to weigh a boxful of even the
prettiest lies against five of even the
slimmest real, true letters?" he asked
drily.

** But they Ve not lies f " snapped Stan-
ton. " Surely you don't call anything a
lie unless not only the fact is false, but
the fancy, also, is maliciously distorted!
Now take this case right before us. Sup-
pose there isn't any * little brother * at all ;
suppose there isn't any * Painted Desert \
suppose there isn't any ' black sheep up on
^a grandfather's farm ', suppose there isn't
lanyihing; suppose, I say, that every single,
individual fact stated is false — ^what
earthly difference does it make so long as
the fancy still remains the truest, realest,

MOLLY HAKE-BEUEVE

Nearest, funniest thing that ever happened
to a fellow in his life? ''

^Oh, hoi'* said the Doctor. '*S%
Aat^s the trouble is it I It isn't just rheu«
matism that's keeping you thin and wor*
ried looking, eh ? It's only that you find
yourself suddenly in the embarrassing
predicament of being engaged to one girl
and — ^in love with another ? ^

*'N— o!*' cried Stanton franticaH/.
^ N— 01 That's the mischief of it— th«
very mischief I I don't even know that
the Serial-Letter Co. iy a girl Why ft
might be an old lady, rather whimsically
inclined. Even the oldest lady, I pre*
tame, might very reasonably perfume her
note-paper with cinnamon roses. It might
even be a bc^. One letter indeed smdt
yery strongly of being a b<^ — and mighty
ftod tobacco, tool And great heavens!
what have I got to prove that it isn't even
M old man — some poor old worn out

100

■>.«

« •

• • • »

• • •

» •

• • •

• - •

• «

•. • •

• • •

• •

. •••

• • •

• •

•

■ • • • *

•

» •

• - •

• • • . •

• t * • • •

•
•

'VI::

•
•

• •

• ••

• •

, • • • •

•

• •

•• •

• •

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

Story-writer trjring to ease out the ragged
end of his years ? '*

" Have you told your fianc& about it ? **
asked the Doctor.

Stanton's jaw dropped. ** Have I told
my fiancee about it ? *' he mocked. ** Why
it was she who sent me the circular in
the first place ! But, * tell her about it * ?
Why, man, in ten thousand years, and
then some, how could I make any sane
person understand?**

*' YouVe beginning to make me under-
stand,** confessed the Doctor.

** Then you're no longer sane," scoffed
Stanton. "The crazy magic of it has
•urely then taken possession of you too.
Why how could I go to any sane person
like Cornelia — ^and Cornelia is the mosi
absolutely, hopelessly sane person you
ever saw in your life — ^how could I go to
anyone like that, and annoimce: *Cor-»
nelia, if you find any perplexing cfa^uige in

lOJ

MOLLY MAKB-BELISVB

me during your absence — and jour
conscious neglect — ^it is only that I havt
fallen quite madly in love with a person *
— ^would you call it a person? — wha
doesn't even exist fTherefore for die
sake of this ' person who doesn't exist \
I ask to be released"

**Ohl So you do ask to be released 2*
interrupted the Doctor.

•* Why. no I Certainly not I *' insisted
Stanton. ** Suppose the girl you love does
hurt your feelings a little bit now and
then, would any man go ahead and give
up a real flesh-and-blood sweetheart for
the sake of even the most wonderful pa-
per-and-ink girl whcHn he was reading
about in an unfinished serial story 2
Would he, I say — ^would he ? '*

**Y-e-s/' said the Doctor soberly.
•• y-e-s, I think he would, if what you caH
the ^ paper-and-iidc girl' suggested sud*
iidBfy an entirely new, undreamed-of vista

104

MOLLY MAKE.B£LISia|

of emotional and spiritual iatblMh

tioft.**

; •'But I tell you * she's' probably •'

BOYl** persisted Stanton doggedly.

••Well, why don^t you go ahead and
find out? " quizzed the Doctor.

••Find out?'^ cried Stanton hotly.
•• Find out ? I'd like to know how any^
body is going to find out, when the only
given address is a private post-office box»
and as far as I know there's no sex to a
post-crfKce box. Find out? Why, man,
that basket over there is full of my let-
ters returned to me because I tried to
• find out '. The first time I asked, they
answered me with just a teasing, snub*
/ bing telegram, but ever since then they've
simply sent back my questions with %
stem printed slip announcing, ** Your let-
ter o f ■ is hereby returned to you.
Kindly allow us to call your attention t9
the fact that we are not running a corre^

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

•pondence bureau. Our circular dbtinctljr
atates, etc/*

*' Sent you a printed slip?" cried the
Doctor scoffingly. " The love-letter busi-
ness must be thriving. Very evidently
you are by no means the only importunate
•ubscriber.'*

"Oh, Thunder!" growled Stanton.
The idea seemed to be new to him and not
altogether to his taste. Then suddenly his
face began to brighten. " No, I'm lying,"
he said. ** No, they haven't always sent
tne a printed slip. It was only yesterday
that they sent me a rather real sort of
letter. You see," he explained, **I got
pretty mad at last and I wrote them
frankly and told them that I didn't give
a dam who 'Molly* was, but simply
:wanted to know what she was. I told
them that it was just gratitude on my
part, the most formal, impersonal sort of
gratitude — a perfectly plausible desire to

lo6

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVB ^

say 'thank you' to some one who had
been awfully decent to me these past few
weeks. I said right out that if ' she * was
a boy, why we'd surely have to go fishing
together in the spring, and if * she * was
an old man, the very least I could do
would be to endow her with tobacco, and
if ' she ' was an old lady, why I'd simply
be obliged to drop in now and then of a
rainy evening and hold her knitting for
her/'

"And if *she' were a girl?" probed
the Doctor.

Stanton's mouth began to twitch.
^ Then Heaven help me I '* he laughed.

"Well, what answer did you get?'*
persisted the Doctor. "What do you
call a realish sort of letter ? "

With palpable reluctance Stanton drew
a gray envelope out of the cuff of hi>
wrapper.

" I suppose you might as well see the

107

MOLLY MAK&BELIEVE

vliele business,'' he admitted consciously.
There was no special diffidence in the
Doctor's manner this time. His clutch on
liie letter was distmctly inquisitive, and
he read out the opening sentences with
aloMSt rhetorical effect

• Oh, Carl dear, you silly boy, WHY do
y»« persist in hectoring me so ? Don't yoa
iwdcrstand that Tre got only a certain
amount of Ingenuity an3rway, and if yott
forct me to use it all in trying to coneeat
my Identity from you» how much shall X,
possibly hare left to devise schemes for
jrour amusement? Why do you persist;
lor instance, in wanting to see my face?
Maybe I haven't got any facet Maybe I
lost my face in a railroad accident, Ho«i
do yott suppose it would make me feel, then,
to have you keep teasing and teasing.— Oh,
Carl!

•* Isn't it enough for me Just to tell you

cmce for all that there is an insuperable ob*

stacle in the way of our ever meeting.

Maybe I've got a huirfxmd who is cruel to

'«|pa» Hajbe, biggest obstacle of an, I've g9t

108 ^

^ MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVS

hU husband whom I am utterly deroted ta
Maybc» instead of any of these things, Fm
t poor, old wizened-up, Shut-In, tossinjf
day and night on a very small bed of rery
big pain. Maybe worse than being sick I'm
starving poor, and maybe, worse Uian being
sick or poor, I am most horribly tired of
myself. Of course if you are very young
and very prancy and reasonably good-lo<rfc^
ing, and still are tired of yourself, you can
almost always rest yourself by going on
the stage where — ^with a little rouge and a
lifferent colored wig, and a new nose, and
Airts instead of trousers, or trousers in*
ficad of skirts, and age instead of youths
and badness instead of goodnea*-— yo«
caa give your ego a perfectly limit!
number of happy holidays. But if you
•Idish, I say, and pitifully 'shut in'^ just
how would you go to work, I woodtr, !•
. Ttat your personality ? How for i&sCaiiot
'^cottld you take your biggest, grayest, cldti ,
worry about your doctor's bill, and rouge k !
up into a radiant, young joke ? And how, I
for instance, out of your lonely, dreary, j
middle-aged orphanhood are you going
to find a way to short-skirt your rheumatk

109

MOLLY MARE-BELIEVE

pains, and braid into two perfectly huge
pink-bowed pigtails the hair that you
haven't got, and caper round so ecstati-
cally before the foot-lights that the old
gentleman and lady in the front seat abso-
lutely swear you to be the living image
of their Mong lost Amy'? And how, if
the farthest journey you ever will take again
is the monotonous hand-journey from your
pillow to your medicine bottle, then how,
for instance, with map or tinsel or attar of
roses, can you go to work to solve even just
for your own satisfaction the romantiCf
shimmering secrets of — ^Morocco?

"Ah! You've got me now, you think?
All decided in your mind that I am an aged
invalid? I didn't say so. I just said
• maybe '. Likelier than not I've saved my
climax for its proper place. How do you
know, — for instance, that I'm not a — * Cul-
lud Pusson ' ? — So many people are."

Without signature of any sort, the let-
ter ended abruptly then and there, and
as though to satisfy his sense of some*
thing left unfinished, the Doctor begah at

^ *l ■

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

the beginning and read it all over again
in a mumbling, husky whisper.

" Maybe she is — * colored */' he volun*
teered at last.

** Very likely," said Stanton perfectly
cheerfully. " It's just those occasional
humorous suggestions that keep me keyed
so heroically up to the point where I'm
actually infuriated if you even suggest
that I might be getting really interested
in this mysterious Miss Molly! You
haven't said a single sentimental thing
about her that I haven't scoffed at — ^now
have you ? "

" N — 0," acknowledged the Doctor.
" I can see that you've covered your re-
treat all right. Even if the author of
these letters should turn out to be a one-
legged veteran of the War of 1812, you
still could say, * I told you so '. But all
the same, I'll wager that you'd gladly
give a hundred dollars, cash dow^^ if yott

III

MOLLY MAKE-BELIETX

eMid onl J go ahead and prove the little
y firVs actual existence.*'
^ Stantcm's shoulders squared suddenly/
but his mouth retained at least a faint
vestige of its original smile.

**You mistake the situation entirely,**
he said. " It's the little girl's non-exis-
tence that I am most anxious to prove/*

Then utterly without reproach or in-
terference, he reached over and grabbed
ft forbidden cigar from the Doctor's cigar
case, and lighted it, and retreated as
far as possible into the gray film of
smoke.

It was minutes and minutes befftre
either man spoke again. Then at last
after much crossing and re-crossing of
his knees the Doctor asked drawlingly,
,^And when is it that you and Cornelia
•re planning to be married ? **

^ Next April,'* said Stanton briefly.

** U~iii--m,** said the Doctor. Aftart

iia

- * — -.--.^

w •

• *

V « • • •

-1
*■ .. »

m •• • •

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

few more minutes he said, *'
again.

I The second " U— m — m ^ seemed to if*
ritate Stanton unduly. " Is it your head
that's spinning round ? ** he asked tersely.
•* You sound like a Dutch top I **

The Doctor raised his hands cautiously
to his forehead. " Your story does makt
me feel a little bit giddy/* he acknowl-
edged Then with sudden intensity,
*' Stanton, you're playing a dangerous
game for an engaged man. Cut it out, I
sayr'

"Cut what out?'* said Stanton stub-
bornly.

The Doctor pointed exasperatedly ta*
wards tie Wg box of letters. ** Cut those
out,** he said. •'A sentimental corre-
' apondence with a girl who's — ^more inter- t
esting tfian your fianc6e I '' |

«W-h^-w!" growled Stanton, "IH
Itardlf stand for that statement*'

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

••Well, then lie down for it/' taunted
the Doctor. " Keep right on being sick

and worried and .** Peremptorily he

reached out both hands towards the box.

" Here I " he insisted. *' Let's dump the
whole mischievous nonsense into the fire
and bum it up! "

With an "Ouch," of pain Stanton
knocked the Doctor's hands away. " Bum
up my letters ? " he laughed. " Well, I
guess not I I wouldn't even bum up the
wall papers. I've had altogether too much
fun out of them. And as for the books,
the Browning, etc — ^why hang it all, I've
gotten awfully fond of those books!"
Idly he picked up the South American vol-
ume and opened the fly-leaf for the Doc- .
tor to see. "Carl from his Molly,'J it
said quite distinctly.

" Oh, yes," mumbled the Doctor? "" It
looks very pleasant. There's absolutely
no denying that it looks very pjeasamt

1X6

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

And some day — out of an old trunk, or
tucked down behind your library encyclo-
pedias—your wife will discover the book
and ask blandly, *Who was Molly'? I
donH remember your ever saying anything
about a " Molly ". — ^Just someone you
used to know ? * And your answer will
be innocent enough : * No, dear, someone
whom I never knew! ' But how about the
pucker along your spine, and the awfully
foolish, grinny feeling around your cheek-
bones ? And on the street and in the cars
and at the theaters you'll always and for-
ever be looking and searching, and asking
yourself, *Is it by any chance possible
that this girl sitting next to me now — ? '
And your wife will keep saying, with just
a barely perceptible edge in her voice,
I ' Carl, do you know that red-haired girl
whom we just passed ? You stared at her
sof And you'll say, *Oh, no! I was
merdyjvondering if ' Oh^yes, you'U

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

always and forever be 'wondering if.
i And mark my words, Stanton, people wht
go about the world with even the most
innocent chronic question in their eyes,
are pretty apt to run up against an un-
fortunately large number of wrong an*-
swers/'

" But you take it all so horribly seri-
ously/' protested Stanton. **Why you
rave and rant about it as though it was
actually my affections that were in-^
volvedl"

•Your affections?** cried the Doctor
in great exasperation, •* Your affections ?
Why, man, if it was only your affections,
do you suppose I'd be wasting even s^
much as half a minute's worry on you?
But it's your imagination that's in-
volved. That's where the blooming mis-
chief lies. Affection is all right Af-
fection is nothing but a nice, safe flame
tiiat feeds only on one special kind of fuel^

Ii8

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

-—its own particular object You've got
im 'affection* for Cornelia, and where
ever Cornelia fails to feed that affection it
is mercifully ordained that the starved
flame shall go out into cold gray ashes
without making any further trouble what-
soeyen But you've got an * imagination '
fer this make-believe girl — ^heaven help
you I — and an 'imagination* is a great,
wilc^ seething, insatiate tongue of fire
that, thwarted once and for all in its orig*
inal desire to gorge itself with realities,
will turn upon you body and soul, and
lUk tip your crackling fancy like so mi«:h
kindling wood — and sear your common
sen^e, and scorch your young wife's hap-
piness. Nothing but Cornelia herself will
[ever make you want — Cornelia. But the
'ather girl, the unknown girl — ^why she's
the face in the clouds, she's the voice in
the sea ; she's the glow of the sunset ; she's
die hush •f the June twilight I Every

119

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

summer breeze, every winter gale, will fan
the embers I Every thimiping, twittering,
twanging pulse of an orchestra, every — .
Oh, Stanton, I say, it isn't the ghost of
the things that are dead that will'ever
come between you and Cornelia. There
never yet was the ghost of any lost thing
that couldn't be tamed into a purring
household pet. But — ^the — ^ghost— of — ^a
— thing — that — you've — never — yet
— foimd? That, I tell you, is a very dif-
ferent matter I "

Pounding at his heart, and blazing in
his cheeks, the insidious argument, the
subtle justification, that had been teeming
in Stanton's veins all the week, burst sud-
denly into speech.

** But I gave Cornelia the chance to be
• all the world ' to me," he protested dog-
gedly, "and she didn't seem to care a
hang about it! Great Scott, man! Are
jfoa going to call a fellow unfaithful be-

120

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

cause he hikes off into a corner now and
then and reads a bit of Browning, for in*
stance, all to himself — or wanders out oo
the piazza some night all sole alone tr>
stare at the stars that happen to bore his
wife to extinction ? *'

"But you'll never be able to read
Browning again *all by yourself V'
taunted the Doctor. '* Whether you buy
it fresh from the presses or borrow it stale
and old from a public library, you'll never
find another copy as long as you live that
dosen't smell of cinnamon roses. And as
to * star-gazing * or any other weird thing
that your wife doesn't care for — ^you'll
never go out alone any more into dawns
or darknesses without the very tingling
conscious presence of a wonder whether
the ' other girl ' would have cared for it I **

''Oh, shucks!" said Stanton. Then,
suddenly his forehead puckered up. " Of
course I've got a worry," he acknowl^

121

ICOLLY MAKE-BELIEVB

edged frankly. ^Any fellow's got 4
worry who finds himself engaged to h%
married to a girl who isn't keen enougij
about it to want to be all the world to
him. But I don't know that even the most
worried fellow has any real cause to h%
scared, as long as the girl in question still
remains the only flesh-and-blood girl on
the face of the earth whom he wishes did
like him well enough to want to be ' all the
world ' to him."

•"The only * flesh-and-blood ' girl?**
scoffed the Doctor. '* Oh, you're all rights
Stanton. I like you and all that But
I'm mighty glad just the same that it
isn't my daughter whom you're going to
marry, with all this 'Molly Make-Be-
lieTe ' nonsense lurking in the background
Cut it out, Stanton, I say. Cut it out I ^ i

*Cut it out?" mused Stanton some-
what distrait. ''Cut it out? jVhatI
M^lly Make-Believe?"

22J

MOLLY MAKX-BELIEYB

Under the quick jerk of his knees tfte
tug box of letters and papers and things ^
brimmed over in rustling froth across the '
wh<^ surface of the table. Just for a
second the muscles in his throat tightened
1 trifle* Then, suddenly he burst out
bughing — ^wildly, uproariously, like an
excited boy,

** Cut it out ? " he cried* ^ But it's such
1 joke ! Can't you see that it's nothing in
llie world except a perfectly delicious, per-
fectly intangible joke?**

"U — m — m,** reiterated the Docton

In the very midst of his reiteration
there came a sharp rap at the door, and in
answer to Stanton's cheerful permission
\ to enter, the so-called " delicious, intangi-
,ble joke" manifested itself abruptly in
the person of a rather small feminine fig^
ure very heavily muffled up in a great
black cloak, and a rose-colored veil that
shrouded her nose and chin bluntly like

•<

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

the nose and chin of a face only half
hewed out as yet from a block of pink
granite.

'* It*s only Molly,** explained an tinde^
niably sweet little alto voice. ** Am I id*

terruptingyou2'*

JUMPING to his feet, flic Doctor
stood staring wildly from Stanton's
amazed face to the perfectly calm, per-
fectly accustomed air of poise that char-
acterized every movement of the pinlc-
shrouded visitor. The amazement in facf
never wavered for a second from Stan-
ton's blush-red visage, nor the supreme
serenity from the lady's whole attitude.
But across the Doctor's startled features
a fearful, outraged consciousness of
having been deceived, warred mightily
with a consciousness of unutterable
mirth.

Advancing toward the fireplace with a
rather slow -footed, hesitating gait, the lit-
tle visitor^s attention focused suddenly on
the cluttered table and she cried out with

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

wmistakable delight. ^ Why, what are
]Wi people doing with all my letters and
things ?••

Then climbing up on tHc sturdy brass
lender, she thrust her pink, impenetrable
features right into the scared, pallid face
of the shabby old clock and announced
pointedly, ^It*s almost half-past seven.
And I can stay till just eight o'clock ! *•

When she turned around again the
Doctor was gone.

With a tiny shrug of her shoulders, she
settled herself down then in a big, high-
backed chair before the fire and stretched
out her overshoed toes to the shining edge
of the fender. As far as any apparent
self-consciousness was concerned, she
might just as well have been all alone in
the room.

Convulsed with amusement, yet almost
paralyzed by a certain stubborn, dumb sort
of embarrassment, nothing on earth could

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

have forced Stanton into making eren an
indefinite speech to the girl until she had
made at least one perfectly definite and
reasonably illuminating sort of speech te
him. Biting his grinning lips into as
straight a line as possible^ he gathered up
the scattered pages of the evening paper
and attacked them furiously with scowl-
ing eyes.

After a really dreadful interim of si-
lence, the mysterious little visitor rose in
a gloomy, discouraged kind of way, and
climbing up again on the narrow brass
fender, peered once more into the face of
the dock.,

"It's twenty minutes of eight, now,**
she announced. Into her voice crept for
the first time the faintest perceptible sug-
gestion of a tremor. " It's twenty min-
utes of eight — now — ^and I've got to leave
here exactly at eight. Twenty minutes is
a rather — a rather stingy little bit out of

£a7

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE
a whole — lifetime," she added falter-

ingly.

Then, and then only did Stanton's nerv-
ousness break forth suddenly into one
wild, uproarious laugh that seemed to
light up the whole dark, ominous room as
though the gray, sulky, smoldering
hearth-fire itself had exploded into iri-
descent flame. Chasing close behind the
musical contagion of his deep guffaws fol-
lowed the softer, gentler giggle of the
dainty pink-veiled lady.

By the time they had both finished
laui^ing it was fully quarter of eight

** But you see it was jusl this way," ex-
plained the pleasant little voice — all alto
notes again. Caifijously a sliii), unringed
^ hand burrowed 0V\»^ from the som^^er folds
of the big cloak, add rai^d the ^tk
mouth-mumbling v^*a as much as half ail
inch above the rcd-v^tyjv>d speech line.
* You see it was just thL way. Yoie

128

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

me a lot of money — all in advance — for
a six weeks' special edition dc luxe Love-
Letter Serial, And I spent your money
the day I got it; and worse than that I
owed it — ^long before I even got it ! And
worst of all, I've got a chance now to go
home to-morrow for all the rest of the
winter. No, I don't mean that exactly.
I mean I've found a chance to go up to
Vermont and have all my expenses paid-
just for reading aloud every day to a lady
who isn't so awfully deaf. But you see
I still owe you a week's subscription—
and I can't refund you the money because
I haven't got it. And it happens that I
can't run a fancy love-letter business from
the special house that I'm going to.
There aren't enough resources there — and
all that. So I thought that perhaps — per«
haps— considering how much you've been
teasing and teasing to know who I was —
I thought that peiiiaps if I came here this

1^9

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

eradng and let you really see me — thai
maybe, you know — maybe, not positively,
but just fftaybe — ^you'd be willing to call
that equivalent to one week's subscription.
Would your''

In the sharp eagerness of her question
she turned her shrouded face full-view to
Stanton's curious gaze, and he saw the
little nervous, mischievous twitch of her
lips at the edge of her masking pink veil
resolve itself suddenly into a whimper of
real paia Yet so vivid were the lips, so
blissfully, youthfully, lusciously carmine^
that every single, individual statement she
made seemed only like a festive little an«
nouncement printed in red ink.

** I guess Fm not a very — good business
manager,** faltered the red-lipped voice
with incongruous pathos. ^Indeed I
know I'm not because— well because — ^the

•

Serial-Letter Co. has *gone broke I
Bahkrupt \ is it, that you really say? **

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

With a little mockingly playful imitak
don of a stride she walked the first two
fingers of her right hand across the sur- '
face of the table to Stanton's discarded *^
supper dishes.

** Oh, please may I have that piece of
cold toast?" she asked plaintively. No
professional actress on the stage could
have spoken the words more deliciously.
Even to the actual crunching of the toast
in her little shining white teeth, she sought
to illustrate as fantastically as possible the
ultimate misery of a bankrupt person
starving for cold toast

Stanton's spontaneous laughter at-
tested his full appreciation of her
mimicry,

** But I tell you the Serial-Letter Co.
\has • gone broke ' I ** she persisted a trifle
wistfully. •*! guess — I guess it takes a
man to really run a business with any
0ort of financial success, 'cause you tee a

lit

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

man never puts an}rthing except his head'
into his business. And of course if you
only put your head into it, then you go
right along giving always just a little wee
bit less than * value received * — ^and so you
can't help, sir, making a profit. Why
people would think you were plain, stark
crazy if you gave them even one more
pair of poor rubber boots than they'd paid
for. But a woman! Well, you see my
little business was s^ sort of a scheme
to sell sympathy — ^perfectly good sym-
pathy, you know — ^but to sell it to people
who really needed it, instead of giving it
away to people who didn't care anything
about it at all. And you have to run that
sort of business almost entirely with your
heart! — and you wouldn't feel decent at all,
onless you delivered to everybody just a
fittle tiny bit more sympathy than he paid
for. Otherwise, you see you wouldn't be
iielivering perfectly good sympathy. So

13^

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE ^

that's why — ^you understand now — ^that's
why I had to send you my very own
woolly blanket-wrapper, and my very own
silver porringer, and my very own sling-
shot that I fight city cats with, — ^because,
you see, I had to use every single cent of
your money right away to pay for the
things that I'd already bought for other
people,"

"For other people?" quizzed Stanton
a bit resentfully.

"Oh, yes," acknowledged the girl;
'' for several other people." Then, " Did
you like the idea of the 'Rheumatic
Nights Entertainment *? " she asked quite
abruptly.

" Did I like it? " cried Stanton. " Did
I like it?*'

With a little shrugging air of apology
the girl straightened up very stiffly in her
chair.

" Of course it wasn't exactly an ori|f'

133

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

inal idea,'' she explained contritely;
^That is, I mean not original for yotu
QTou see, it's really a little dub of mine-^
a little subscription club of rheumatic
people who can't sleep; and I go every
night in the week, an hour to each one of
them. There are only three, you know.
There's a youngish lady in Boston, and a
very, very old gentleman out in Brooklinc,
and the tiniest sort of a poor little sick
girl in Cambridge. Sometimes I turn up
just at supper-time and jolly them along a
bit with their gruels. Sometimes I don't
get around till ten or eleven o'clock in the
great boo-black dark. From two to three
in the morning seems to be the cruelest,
* grayest, coldest time for the little girl id
Cambridge. « «• • And I play the
banjo decently well, you know, and sing
more or less— and tell stories, or read
aloud ; and I most always go dressed up in
tome sort of a fancy costume 'cause I

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

car^'t seem to find any other thing to do
that astcmishes sick people so much and
makes them sit up so bravely and look so
shiny. And really, it isn't such dreadfully
hard work to do, because everything fits
together so well. The short skirts, for
instance, that, turn me into such a jolly
prattling great-grandchild for the poor
old gentleman, make me just a perfectly
rational, contemporaneous-looking play*
mate for the small Cambridge girl. I'm
80 very, very little 1 "

** Only, of course,** she finished wryly J
" only, of course, it costs such a horrid
hig lot for costumes and carriages and
things. That's what's ' busted * me, as the
boys say. And then, of course, I'm most
dreadfully sleepy all the day times when I
* ought to be writing nice things for my
Serial-Letter Co. business. And then one
day last week — ^ the vivid red lips twisted
oddly at one corner. *'One night last

^5S

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

week they sent me word from Cambr^je
that the littk, little girl was going to die —
and was calling and calling for the ' Gray-
Plush Squirrel Lady '. So I hired a big
gray squirrel coat from a furrier whom
I know, and I ripped up my muff and
made me the very best sort of a hot, gray,
smothery face that I could — ^and I went
out to Cambridge and sat three hours on
the footboard of a bed, cracking jokes—
and nuts — ^to beguile a little child's death-
pain. And somehow it broke my heart —
or my spirit— or something. Somehow I
think I could have stood it better with my
own skin face! Anyway the little girl
doesn't need me any more. Anyway, it
doesn't matter if someone did need me!
... I tell you I'm ' broke ' ! I tell
you I haven't got one single solitary more
thing to give! It isn't just my pocket-
book that's empty: it's my head that's
spent, too! It's my heart that's alto

136

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

gether stripped! And Fm going to run
away! Yes, lam! ^'

Jumping to her feet she stood there for
an instant all out of breathy as though just
the mere fancy thought of running away
had almost exhausted her. Then sud-
denly she began to laugh.

"I'm so tired of making up things/'
she confessed ; " why, I'm so tired of mak-i
ing up grandfathers, I'm so tired of mak-
ing up pirates, I'm so tired of making-up
lovers — ^that I actually cherish the bill col-
lector as the only real, genuine acquaint-
ance whom I have in Boston. Certainly
there's no slightest trace of pretence about
him! . ... . Excuse me for being so
flippant," she added soberly, "but you
sec I haven't got any sympathy left even
for myself.'*

" But for heaven's sake ! " cried Stan*
ton, " why don't you let somebody hc^g
you? Why don't you let me **

^37

MOLLY MAKE-BEUEVB

•• Oh, you can help me ! " cried the lit-
tle red-lipped voice excitedly. *' Oh, yes>
indeed you can help me! That's why I
came here this evening. You see I've set*
tied up now with every one of my crecfi-
tors except you and the youngish Boston
lady, and I'm on my way to her house
now. We're reading Oriental Fairy sto-
ries together. Truly I think she'll be v*y
glad indeed to release me from my con-
tract when I offer her my coral beads in-
stead, because they are dreadfully nice
beads, my real, unpretended grandfather
carved them for me himself. ^ • ..
But how can I settle with you ? I haven't
got anything left to settle with, and it
might be months and months before I
could refund the actual cash money. So
wouldn't you— couldn't you please call my
coming here this evening an equivalent td
one week's subscription ? **

iSVriggling out of the doak and yeil

138

4* W -

•• •

• «

.• •

••

« • • • • ■

«• <> • •

t) t * *

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

that wrapped her like a chrysalis she
emerged suddenly a glimmering, shinhi
mering little oriental figure of satin and
silver and haunting sandalwood — a ver-
itable little incandescent rainbow of
spangled moonlight and flaming scarlet
and dark purple shadows. Great, heavy.
Jet-black curls caught back from her
small piquant face by a blazing rhine-
stone fillet, — cheeks just a tiny bit over-
tinted with rouge and excitement,— big,
red-brown eyes packed full of high li^^tt
like a startled fawn's, — bold in the utter
security of her masquerade, yet scared al-
most to death by the persistent tmderlying
heart-thump of her unescapable self-con-
sciousness, — altogether as tantalizing, al«
together as unreal, as a vision out of the
Arabian Nights, she stood there staring
quizzically at Stanton.

*' Would you call it — an — equivalcBl?
Would you ? " she asked nervously.

MOLLY MAKE.BEUEVE

Then pirouetting over to the largest
/ mirror in sight she began to smooth and
twist her silken sash into place. Some-
where at wrist or ankle twittered the
jingle of innumerable bangles.

'*Oh! Don't I look— gorgeous!" she
•tammered* "O— h— hi"

14a

EVERYTHING that was discreet
and engaged-to-be-married in Stan-
ton's conservative make-up exploded sud-
denly into one utterly irresponsible speech.

"You little witch I'' he cried out
"You little beauty I For heaven's sake
come over here and sit down in this chair
where I can look at you I I want to talk
to you! I ''

Pirouetting once more before the mir-
ror, she divided one fleet glance between
admiration for herself and scorn for
Stanton. f

"Oh, yes, I felt perfectly sure that'
you'd insist upon having me ' pretty ' 1 "
she announced sternly. Then courtesying
low to the ground in mock humility, she
began to sing-song mischievously :

143

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

So Molly, Molly made-her-a-face.
Made it of rouge and made it of lace
Long at the rouge and the lace are fair^
Ohf Mr. Man, what do you care? "

You don't need any rouge or lace to'
make you pretty 1" Stanton fairly
shouted in his vehemence. "Anybody
might have known that that lovely, little

mind of yours could only live in a **

"Nonsense!" the girl interrupted, al-
most temperishly. Then with a quick, im-
patient sort of gesture she turned to the
table, and picking up book after book,
opened it and stared in it as though it had
been a mirror. " Oh, maybe my mind is
pretty enough," she acknowledged reluc-
tantly. " But likelier than not, my face is
not becoming — to me,*'
I Crossing slowly over to Stanton's side
she seated herself, with much jingling,
rainbow'-colored, sandalwood-scented dig-
nity, in the chair that the Doctor had
Just vacated

144

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

**Poor dear, you've been pretty sick,
haven't you ? " she mused gently. Cau-
tiously then she reached out and touched
the soft, woolly cuff of his blanket-wrap-
per. " Did you really like it ? " she asked.

Stanton began to smile again. '^Did
I really like it?" he repeated joyously.
" Why, don't you know that if it hadn't
been for you I should have gone utterly
mad these past few weeks? Don't you
know that if it hadn't been for you—
don*t you know that if — ^" A little over-
xealoiimly he clutched at the tinsel fringe
on tide oriental lady's fan. '* Don't you
know— don't you know that I'm— en-
gaged to be married? " he finished weakly.

The oriental lady shivered suddenly, as
any lady might shiver on a November
night in thin silken clothes. " Engaged
to be married ? " she stammered. " Oh,
yes! Wliif— of course! Most men are!
Really unless you catch a man very young

145

MOLLY MAK&BELIBVE

and keep him absolutely constantly by
your side you cannot hope to walk even
into his friendship— except across the

heart of scmie other woman/* Again she
shivered and jingled a hundred merry lit-
tle bangles. "But why?" she asked
abruptly, *' why, if you're engaged to be
married, did you come and — ^buy love-
letters of me? My love-letters are dis-
tinctly for lonely people," she added
severely.

" How dared you — ^How dared you go
into the love-letter business in the first
place?" quizzed Stanton dryly. **And
when it comes to asking personal ques*
tions, how dared you send me printed slips
in answer to my letters to you ? Printed
slips, mind you! . • • How many
men are you writing love-letters to, any
way?"

The oriental lady threw out her small
hands deprecatingly. " How many men I

146

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

Only two besides yourself. There's sudi
a fad for nature study these days that al-
most everybody this year has ordered the
'Gray-Plush Squirrel* series. But I'm
doing one or two ' Japanese Fairies * for
sick children, and a high school history
class out in Omaha has ordered a weekly
epistle from William of Orange.'*

" Hang the High School class out in
Omaha!" said Stanton. "It was the
icrve-letters that I was asking about"

"Oh, yes, I forgot,'* murmured the
oriental lady. "Just two men besides
yourself, I said, didn't I? Well one of
them is a life convict out in an Illinois
prison. He's subscribed for a whole year
•—for a fortnightly letter from a girl in
Killarney who has got to be named
• Katie *. He's a very, very old man, I
think, but I don't even know his name
•cause he's only a number now — ^*4632'
something like that. And I have to

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

•ead all my letters over to Killamejr to bt
mailed — Oh, he's awfully particular about
that And it was pretty hard at first
working up all the geography that he
knew and I didn't But — ^pshawl You're
not interested in Killamey. Then there's
a New York boy down in Ceyton on a
smelly old tea plantation* His people
have dropped him, I guess, for some
reason or other; so I'm just * the girl from
home ' to him, and I prattle to him every
month or so about the thmgs he used to
care about It's easy enough to work
that up from the social columns in the
New York papers — ^and twice I've been
over to New York to get special details
for him; once to find out if his mother
was really as sick as the Sunday paper
paid, and once — ^yes, really, once I butted
in to a tea his sister was giving, and wrote
him, yes, wrote him all about how the
moths were eating up the big moose-head

MOLLY MAItE-BELIEVX

ia his own front hall. And he sent an
awfully funny^ nice letter of thanks to the
Serial-Letter G>. — ^yes, he did ! And then
there's a crippled French girl out in the
Berkshires who is utterly crazy, it seem^
about the 'Three Musketeers*, so Fm
d'Artagnan to her, and it's dreadfully
hard work — in Frwich — but I'm learning;
a bt out of that, and **

•"There. Don't tell me any morel**
cried Stanton.

Then suddenly the pulses in his templet
began to pound so hard and so loud that
he could fiot aeem to estimate at all jusl
how loud he was speaking.

••WhoareyouP^'hemsisted. "Who
are you? Tell me instantly, I say I Wh&
are you anyway f " I

' The oriental lady jumped up in alarm,
*rm no one at all — ^to you," she said
oooHy, ••except just — Molly Make-Bo»
leve.**

149

it
it

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

Something in her tone seemed to fairly
snadden Stanton. |

" You shall tell me who you are V* he .
cried " You shall I I say you shall I "

Plunging forward he grabbed at her lit-
tle bangled wrists and held them in a vise
that sent the rheumatic pains shooting up
his arms to add even further frenzy to
his brain.

Tell me who you are ! " he grinned.

You shan't go out of here in ten thou-
sand years till you've told me who you
are!"

Frightened, infuriated, quivering with
astonishment, the girl stood trying to
wrench her little wrists out of his mighty
grasp, stamping in perfectly impotent rage '
all the while with her soft-sandalled, jing-
ling feet

'* I won't tell you who I am 1 1 won't! I
won't!" she swore and reswore in a
4ozen different staccato accents. Tbe

MOLLY MAlt&BELlEVK

whole daring pussion of the Orient that
costumed her seemed to have permeated
'every fiber of her small being.

Then suddenly she drew in her breath
in a long quivering sigh. Staring up into
her face, Stanton gave a little groan of
dismay, and released h^r hands.

"Why, Molly! Molly! You're— cry-
ing," he whispered. *'Why, little girl I
Why ''

Backing slowly away from him, she
made a desperate effort to smile through
her tears.

** Now youVe spoiled everything," she
said

"Oh no, not— everything,** argued
Stanton helplessly from his chair, afraid
to rise to his feet, afraid even to shuffle
his slippers on the floor lest the slightest
suspicion of vehemence on his part should
hasten that steady, backward retreat of
hers towards the door.

IS I

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

Already she had re-acquired her cloak
stid overshoes and was groping out scnne-
what blindly for her veil in a frantic ef-
fort to avoid any possible chance of tnra-
ii^ her back efen for a second on so dan-
gerous a person as himself.

''Yes, eirerytUng,'' nodded the smatt
grieved face. Yet the tragic, snafflis^ lit-
tle sob that accompanied tl^ words only
served to add a most ei^ancittg, tip-nosed
vivacity to the statement.

''Ob, of conrse I know/' she added
hastily. " Oh, of oottrse I kaom perfadly
wen that I OHgfatn't to have come alcMie
to your roon» like thisT' Madly ^
b^fan to wind the pink veil round and
round and rotmd her cheeks like a band-
age. "Oh, of course I know perfectly
wen that it wasn't even remotely proper I
Bi^ don't you think — don't you think liiat
if yott've always been awfully, awfuHy
strict and particular with yourself about

15a

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

things all your life, that you might have
risked — safely — ^just one little innocent,
mischievous sort of a half hour? Espe*
cially if it was the only possible way yoit
could think of to square up everything ahd
add just a little wee present besides?
'Cause nothing, you know, that you can
afford to give ever seems exactly like giv-
ing a really, truly present It's got to hurt
you somewhere to be a ' present \ So my
coming here this evening — ^this way — ^was
altogether the bravest, scariest, unwisest,
most-like-a-present-feeling-thing that I
could possibly think of to do — for you.
And even if you hadn't spoiled everything,
I was going away to-morrow just the
lame forever and ever and ever I "
) Cautiously she perched herself on the
edge of a chair, and thrust her narrow,
gold-embroidered toes into the wide, blunt
depths of her overshoes. " Forever and
ever! ^ riie insisted aknost gteatingly.

'33

MOLLY MAK&BELIEVE

••Not forever and ever I ^* protested
Stanton vigorously. "You don't think
for a moment, do you, that after all this
wonderful, jolly friendship of ours, youVc
Ifoing to drop right out of sight as thougfi
the earth had opened ? **

Even the little quick, forward lurch of
his shoulders in the chair sent the girl
scuttling to her feet again, one overshoe
still in her hand.

Just at the edge of the door-mat she
turned and smiled at him mockingly.
Really it had been a long time since she
had smiled

"Surely you don't think that you'd
be able to recognize me in my street
clothes, do you ? " she asked bluntly. |

Stanton's answering smile was quite as
mocking as hers.

"Why not?" he queried. "Didn't 1
have the pleasure of choosing your winter
hat for you ? Let me see, — ^it was brown^

^54

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

with a pink rose — ^wasn*t itf I should
know it among a million."

With a little shrug of her shoulders she
leaned back against the door and stared
at him suddenly out of her big red-brown
eyes with singular intentness.

'* Well, will you call it an equivalent to
one week's subscription ? " she asked very
gravely.

Some long-sleeping devil of mischief
awoke in Stanton's senses.

" Equivalent to one whole week's sub-
scription?" he repeated with mock in-
credulity. "A whole week — seven days
and nights ? Oh, no I No I No I I don't
think you've given me, yet, more than
about — four days' worth to think about.
Just about four days* worth, I should
think."

Pushing the pink veil further and fur-
ther back from her features, with plainly
quivering hands, the girl's whole soul

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

seemed to blaze out at him suddenly, and
then wince back again. Then just as
quickly a droll little gleam of malice
glinted in her eyes.

" Oh, all right then," she smiled. " If
you really think Fve given you only four
days* and nights' worth of thoughts —
here's something for the fifth day and
night'*

Very casually, yet still very accurately,
her right hand reached out to the knob of
the door.

** To cancel my debt for the fifth day,"
•he said, '*do you really ' honest-injun '
want to know who I am? I'll tell you!
First, you've seen me before."

** What? " cried Stanton, plunging for-
ward in his chair.

Something in the girl's quick clutch of
tfie door-knob warned him quite distinctly
to relax again into his cushions.

^Yct," sbe repeated UhxnfbmAf.

158

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

And you've talked with me too, as often
as twice I And moreover you've danced
with me I '*

Tossing her head with sudden-bom
daring she reached up and snatched off
her curly black wig, and shook down all
around her such a great, shining, utterly
glorious mass of mahogany colored hair
that Stanton's astonishment turned almost
into faintness.

"What?" he cried out. ''What?
You say I've seen you before? Talked
with you? Waltzed with you, perhaps?
Never ! I haven't ! I tell you I haven't I
I never saw that hair before I If I had, I
shouldn't have forgotten it to my dying
day. Why ^"

With a little wail of despair she leaned
back against the door. " You don't even
remember me nowf *^ she mourned " Oh
dear, dear, dear! And I thought you
were so beautiful ! " Then, woman-like,

^S7

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

her whole sympathy rushed to defend
him from her own accusations. *'0h,
well, it was at a masquerade party," she
acknowledged generously, "and I sup-
pose you go to a great many masquer-
ades."

Heaping up her hair like so much mol-
ten copper into the hood of her cloak, and
trying desperately to snare all the wild,
escaping tendrils with the softer mesh of
her veil, she reached out a free hand at
last and opened the door just a crack.

" And to give you something to think
about for the sixth day and night," she
resumed suddenly, with the same strange
little glint in her eyes, " to give you some-
thing to think about the sixth day, I'll tell
^you that I really was hungry — ^when I
asked you for your toast. I haven't had
anything to eat to-day ; and ''

Before she could finish the sentence
Stanton had sprung from his chair, and

158

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

Stood trying to reason out madly whether
one single more stride would catch her,
or lose her.

*'And as for something for you to
think about the seventh day and night,**
she gasped hurriedly. Already the door
had opened to her hand and her little fig-
ure stood silhouetted darkly against the
bright, yellow-lighted hallway, " here'ff
something for you to think about for
twenty-seyen days and nights ! " Wildly
her little hands went clutching at the
wood-work. "I didn't know you were
engaged to be married," she cried out pas*
sionately, "and I loved you — loved you
^oved you I *'

Then in a flash she was gone^

ute

WITH absolute finality die bif door
banged behind her. A minute
later the street door, four flights down,
rang out in jarring reverberation. A
minute after that it seemed as though
every door in every house on the street
slanmied shrilly. Then the charred fire-
log sagged down into the ashes with a
sad, puffing sigh. Then a whole row of
books on a loosely packed shelf toppled
over on each other with soft jocose slaps.
Crawling back into his Morris chair
with every bone in his body aching like a
magnetized wire-skeleton charged with
pain, Stanton collapsed again into his pil«
lows and sat staring — ^staring into the dj^

162

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

fag fire. Nine o'clock rang out dully
from the nearest church spire ; ten o'clock,
eleven o'clock followed in turn with mo-
notonous, chiming insistency. Gradually
the relaxing steam-radiators began to
grunt and grumble into a chill quietude.
Gradually along the bare, bleak stretches
of unrugged floor little cold draughts of
air came c/eeping exploringly to his feet.

And still he sat staring — staring into
the fast graying ashes.

- Oh, Glory I Glory I " he said. " Think
what it would mean if all that wonderful
imagination were turned loose upon just
one fellow I Even if she didn't love you,
think how she'd play the game I And if
she did love you? — Oh, lordy; Lordy!
LORD Y I''

Towards midnight, to ease the melan-
choly smell of the dying lamp, he drew
reluctantly forth from his deepest blanket-
wrapper pocket the little knotted handker*^

I6$

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

chief that encased the still-treasured hand^
ful of fragrant fir-balsam, and bending
groanin^ly forward in his chair sifted the
brittle, pungent needles into the face of
the one glowing ember that survived In-
stantly in a single dazzling flash of flame
the tangible forest symbol vanished in
intangible fragrance. But along the hoi*
low of his hand, — across the edge of his
sleeve, — ^up from the ragged pile of books
and papers,— out from the farthest, re-
motest comers of the room, lurked the
unutterable, undestroyable sweetness of
all forests since the world was made.

Almost with a sob in his throat Stan-
ton turned again to the box of letters on
his table.

By dawn the feverish, excited sleep-
lessness in his brain had driven him on
and on to one last, supremely fantastic
impulsie. Writing to Cornelia he told hci
bluntly, f rankly,

164

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

* Dear Cornelia :

•*When I asked you to marry me, ytm
made me promise very solemnly at the time
that if I ever changed my mind regarding
you I would surely tell you. And I laughed
at you. Do you remember? But you were
right, it seems, and I was wrong. For I
believe that I have changed my mind.
That is — I don't know how to express it
exactly, but it has been made very, very
plain to me lately that I do not by any
manner of means love you as little as yojOL
need to be loved.

*• In all sincerity,

•'Carl.'*

To whicK surprising communication
Cornelia answered immediately; but the
'immediately' involved a week's almost
maddening interim,

•Dear Carl:

** Neither mother nor I can make any
sense whatsoever out of your note. By any
possible chance was it meant to be a joke?
BTott say you do not love me * as little ' as X

j6s

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

need to be loved You mean 'as mudi^
don't you? Carl, what do you mean?

Laboriously, with the full prospect of
yet another week's agonising strain and
auspense, Stanton wrote again to Cor-
nefia.

^ Dear Cornelia :

•* No, I meant * as little ' as you need to be
lored* I have no adequate explanation to
make. I have no adequate apology to offer.
I don't think anything. I don't hope any*
thing. All I know is that I suddenly be-
lieve positively that our engagement is a
mistake. Certainly I am neither giving you
all that I am capable of giving you, nor yet
receiving from you all that I am capable of
receiving. Just this fact should decide th^
matter I think.

''Carl.-

Cornelia did not wait to write an an-
swer to this. She telegraphed instead.
The message even in the telegraph oper*
ator^i handwriting looked a little nervooi^

i($6

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

" Do you mean that you are tired of
it ? " she asked quite boldly.

With miserable perplexity Stanton
wired back. " No, I couldn't exactly say
that I was tired of it."

Cornelia's answer to that was fluttering
in his hands within twelve hours.

" Do you mean that there is someone
else ? '* The words fairly ticked them-
selves off the yellow page.

It was twenty-four hours before Stan-
ton made up his mind just what to reply.
Then, " No, I couldn't exactly say there is
anybody else," he confessed wretchedly.

Cornelia's mother answered this time.
The telegram fairly rustled with sarcasm.
" You don't seem to be very sure about
anything," said Cornelia's mother.
, Somehow these words brought the first
cheerful smile to his lips.

"No, you're quite right. I'm not at
til sure about anything," he wired almost

167

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

gleefully in return, wiping his pea with/
delicious joy on the edge of the dean
white bed-spread.

Then because it is really very dangerous
for over-wrought people to try to make
any noise like laughter, a great choking,
bitter sob caught him up suddenly, and
sent his face burrowing down like a night-
scared child into the safe, soft, feathery
depths of his pillow — ^where, with his
knuckles ground so hard into his eyes that
all his tears were turned to stars, there
came to him very, very slowly, so slowly
in fact that it did not alarm him at all, the
strange, electrifying vision of the one fact
on earth that he was sure of : a little keen,
luminous, brown-eyed face with a look in
it, and a look for him only — ^so help hin
God! — ^such as he had never seen on the
face of any other woman since the world
was made. Was it possible? — ^was it
leally possible ? Suddenly his whole heart

l68

* V.

w •

^ h • « W

MOLLY MAK&BELIEVE

. seemed to irradiate light and color and
inusic and sweet smelling things.

"Oh, Molly, Molly, Molly 1" he
shouted. "IwantyoM/ I wznt you!"

In the strange, lonesome days that fol-
lowed, neither burly flesh-and-blood Doc-
tor nor slim paper sweetheart tramped
noisily over the threshold or slid thud-
dingly through the letter-slide.

No one apparently was ever coming to
see Stanton again unless actually com-
pelled to do so. Even the laundryman
seemed to have skipped his usual day ; and
twice in succession the morning paper had
most annoyingly failed to appear. Cer-
tainly neither the boldest private inquiry
nor the most delicately worded public
Advertisement had proved able to dis-
,cover the whereabouts of " Molly Make-
Believe," much less succeeded in bringing
her back. But the Doctor, at least, could
be summoned by ordinary telephone, and

171

MOLLY MAK&BEUEVS

Cornelia and her mother would surely be
moving North eventually, whether Stan-
ton's last message hastened their move-
ments or not

In subsequent experience it seemed to
take two telephone messages to produce
the Doctor. A trifle coolly, a trifle dis-
tantly, more than a trifle disapprovingly,
he appeared at last and stared dully at
Stanton's astonishing booted-and-coated
progress towards health.

"Always glad to serve you — profes-
iionally," murmured the Doctor with an
undeniably definite accent on the word
* professionally \"

" Oh, cut it out ! " quoted Stanton em-
phatically. " What in creation are you so
•tuff y about ? "

"Well, really," growled the Doctor,
" considering the deception you practised
on me ''

" Considering nothing I " shouted Stan*

172

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

ton. " On my word of honor, I tell you
I never consciously, in all my life before,
ever— ever — set eyes upon that wonderful
little girl, until that evening I I never
knew that she even existed! I never
knew I I tell you I never knew — any-
thing! ''

As limply as any stout man could sink
into a chair, the Doctor sank into the seat
nearest him.

"Tell me instantly all about it,'' he
gasped.

"There are only two things to tell,*'
said Stanton quite blithely. " And thC
first thing is what Tve already stated, on
my honor, that the evening we speak of
was actually and positively the first time
I ever saw the girl ; and the second thing
is, that equally upon my honor, I do not
intend to let it remain — ^the last time ! "

"But Cornelia?*' cried the Doctor.
*' What about Cornelia ? "

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

Almost half the sparkle faded ffom
Stanton's eyes. ,

" Cornelia and I have annulled our en-
gagement/' he said very quietly. Then
with more vehemence, " Oh, jrou old dry-
bones, don't you worry about Cornelia!
I'll look out for Cornelia. Cornelia isn't
going to get hurt. I tell you I've figured
and reasoned it all out very, very care-
fully; and I can see now, quite plainly,
that Cornelia never really loved me at all
— «lse she wouldn't have dropped me so
accidentally through her fingers. Why,
there never was even the ghost of a clutch
in Cornelia's fingers."

"But you loved her/' persisted the
Doctor scowlingly.

It was hard, just that second, for Stan-i
ton to lift his troubled eyes to the Doc-
tor's face. But he did lift them and he
lifted them very squarely and steadily.

*'Y^, I thmk I did— love ComeUa."

174

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

he acknowledged frankly. "The very
first time that I saw her I said to myself.
*Here is the end of my journey/ but I
seem to have found out suddenly that the
mere fact of loving a woman does not nec-
essarily prove her that much coveted
'journey's end/ I don*t know exactly
how to express it, indeed I feel beastly
clumsy about expressing it, but somehow
it seems as though it were Cornelia her-
self who had proved herself, perfectly
amiably, no ' journey's end ' after all,
but only a way station not equipped to
receive my particular kind of a perma-
nent guest. It isn't that I wanted any
grand fixings. Oh, can't you understand
that I'm not finding any fault with Cor-
nelia. There never was any slightest pre-
tence about Cornelia. She never, never
even in the first place, made, any possible
effort to attract me. Can't you see that
Cornelia looks to me to-day exactly the

^7S

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVB

way that she looked to me in the first
place; very, amazingly, beautiful. But a
traveler, you know, cannot dally indefin-
itely to feed his eyes on even the most
wonderful view while all his precious life-
long companions, — ^his whims, his hob-
bies, his cravings, his yearnings, — ^are
crouching starved and unwelcome outside
the door.

" And I can't even flatter myself," he
added wryly ; " I can't even flatter myself
that my — agoing is going to inconvenience
Cornelia in the slightest; because I can't
see that my coming has made even the re-
motest perceptible difference in her daily
routine. Anyway — " he finished more
lightly, "when you come right down to
•mating', or 'homing', or 'belonging',
or whatever you choose to call it, it seems
to be written in the stars that plans or no
plans, preferences or no preferences, ini-
tiatives or no initiatives, we belong to

, 176

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

those — and to those only, hang it aflV-
who happen to love us most ! *' »

Fairly jumping from his chair the Doc*
tor snatched hold of Stanton's shoulder.

"Who happen to love us most?'* fie
repeated wildly. "Love us7 usj For
heaven's sake, who's loving you now? ^

Utterly irrelevantly, Stanton brusRed
him aside, and began to rummage anx-
iously among the books on his table.

" Do you know much about Vermont ? **
he asked suddenly. *' It's funny, but al-
most nobody seems to know anything
about Vermont. It's a darned good state,
too, and I can't imagine why all the
geographies neglect it so." Idly his fiti-
ger seemed to catch in a half open pam-
phlet, and he bent down casually to
straighten out the page, " Area in square
miles — 9,565,'' he read aloud musingly.
"Principal products — ^hay, oats, maple-
8ugar ^" Suddenly he threw down

MOLLY MAK£-B£UEVE

the pamphlet and flung himself into the
nearest chair and began to laugh.
" Maple-sugar? " he ejaculated " Maple*
sugar ? Oh, glory I And I suppose there
are some people who think that maple*
sugar is the sweetest thing that ever came
out of Vermont ! "

The Doctor started to give him some
fresh advice — ^but left him a bromide in-
stead

§78

TIOUGH the ensuing interview
with Cornelia and her mother be-
gan quite as coolly as the interview with
the Doctor, it did not happen to end even
in hysterical laughter.

It was just two days after the Doctor's
hurried exit that Stanton received a
formal, starchy little note from Cornelia's
mother notifying him of their return.

Except for an experimental, somewhat
wobbly-kneed journey or two to the edge
of the Public Garden he had made no at-
tempts as yet to resume any outdoor life,
yet for sundry personal reasons of his
own he did not feel over-anxious to post-
pone the necessary meeting. In the im-
mediate emergency at hand strong cour-
age was infinitely more of an asset than

179

MOLLY HAKE-BELIEVE

Strong knees. Filling his suit-case at once
With all the explanatory evidence that he
could carry, he proceeded on cab-wheels
to Cornelians grimly dignified residence.
The street lamps were just beginning to
be lighted when he arrived.

As the butler ushered him gravely into
the beautiful drawing-room he realized
with a horrid sinking of the heart that
Cornelia and her mother were already sit-
ting there waiting for him with a dread-
ful tight-lipped expression on their faces
which seemed to suggest that though he
was already fifteen minutes ahead of his
appointment they had been waiting for
him diere since early dawn.

The drawing-room itself was deli-
riously familiar to him ; crimson-curtained,
green-carpeted, shining with heavy gilt
picture frames and prismatic chandeliers.
Often with posies and candies and theater-
tickets he had strutted across that erst-

180

MOLLY MAK&BEU£V£

while magic threshold and fairly loUed m
the big deep-upholstered chairs whil^
waiting for the silk-rustling advenf of the!
ladies. But now, with his suit-case
clutched in his hand, no Armenian peddler
of laces and ointments could have felt
more grotesquely out of his element.

Indolently Cornelia's mother lifted her
lorgnette and gazed at him skeptically
from the spot just behind his left ear
where the barber had clipped him too
short, to the edge of his right heel tiiat
ttkt bootblack had neglected to polish.
Apparently she did not evai see the suit-
case but,

" Oh, are you leaving town ? " she asked
icily.

Only by the utmost tact on his part did
he finally succeed in establishing t£te-4-
t£te relations with Cornelia herself; and
even then if the house had been a tower
ten stories high, Cornelia's mother, ns9«

i8z]

MOLLY MAK&BEUEVE

tling up the stairs, could not have swished
her skirts any more definitely like a hiss*
ing snake.

In absolute dumbness Stanton and
Cornelia sat listening until the horrid
sound died away. Then, and then only,
did Cornelia cross the room to Stanton's
side and proffer him her hand. The hand
was very cold, and the manner of offering
it was very cold, but Stanton was quite
man enough to realize that this special
temperature was purely a matter of physi-
cal nervousness rather than of mental
intention.

Slipping naturally into the most con-
ventional groove either of word or deed,
Cornelia eyed the suit-case inquisitively,
i "What are you doing?*' she asked
thoughtlessly. "Returning my pres-
ents?"

" You never gave me any presents I *•
said Stanton cheerfully.

182

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

Why, didn't I ? " murmured Cornelia
slowly. Around her strained mouth ai
smile began to flicker faintly. ''Is that
why you broke it off ? " she asked flip-
pantly.

" Yes, partly," laughed Stanton.

Then Cornelia laughed a little bit, too.

After this Stanton lost no possible time
in getting down to facts.

Stooping over from his chair exactly
after the manner of peddlers whom he had
seen in other people's houses, he unbuck-
led the straps of his suit-case, and turned
the cover backward on the floor.

Cornelia followed every movement of
his hand with vaguely perplexed blue eyes.

"Surely," said Stanton, "this is the/
weirdest combination of circumstances v
that ever happened to a man and a girl —
or rather, I should say, to a man and two
girls." Quite accustomed as he now was
to the general eflfect on himself of the

J83

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

wKoIe unique adventure with the Serial*
Letter Co. his heart could not help givini;
a little extra jump on this, the verge of the
astonishing revelation that he was about
to make to Cornelia. " Here/' he stam-
mered, a tiny bit out of breath, " here is
the small, thin, tissue-paper circular that
you sent me from the Serial-Letter Co.
with your advice to subscribe, airi
there — *' pointing earnestly to the teeming
suit-case, — ** there are the minor results
of — having taken your advice."

In Cornelia's face the well-groomed ex-
pression showed sudden signs of imme*
diate disorganization.

Snatching the circular out of his hand
she read it hurriedly, once, twice, three
' times. Then kneeling cautiously down on
Ae floor with all the dignity that char-
acterized every movement of her body, Ae
began to poke here and there into the con-
tents of the suit-case.

x$4

••_:•••

• u t

w ^fc *• fc ^ k •

«••• ~ '/• *y^\ •

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

•"The 'minor results'?" she asked
soberly.

"Why yes/' said Stantwi. ''There,
were several things I didn't have room to
bring. There was a blaxiket-wrapper.
And there was a — ^girl, and there was

a ^"

Cornelia's blonde eyebrows lifted per-
ceptibly. "A girl — ^whom you didn't
know at all — ^sent you a blanket-wrap-
per ? " she whispered.

" Yes I " smiled Stanton. " You see no
girl whom I knew — ^very well — ^seemed
to care a hang whether I froze to death
or not"

"O — h/' said Cornelia very, very
slowly, " O — h.** Her eyes had a strange,
new puzzled expression in them like the
expression of a person who was trying
to look outward and think inward at the
same time.

^But you mustn't be so critical and

187

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

lumglity about it aU,"* protested Stanton, ^
** when Tm really tr3ring so hard to ex-
plain everything perfectly honestly to you
—so that you'll understand exactly how
it happened/'

** I should like very much to be aUe to
understand exactly how it happened/'
mused Cornelia.

Gingerly she approached in succession
the roll of sample wall-paper, the maps,
the time-tables, the books, the little silver
porringer, the intimate-looking scrap of
unfinished fancy-work. One by one Stan-
ton explained them to her, visualizing by
eager phrase or whimsical gesture the par-
ticularly lonesome and susceptible condi-
tions under which each gift had happened
to arrive.

At the great {nle of letters Cornelia's I
hand faltered a trifle.

"How many did I write you?" she
tsked with real curiosity.

988

MOLLY MAKE-BEXIEYE

**Five tWn ones, and a postal-card,^
said Stanton almost apologetically.
J Choosing the fattest lookmg letter that
die could find, Cornelia toyed with the
envelope for a second. " Would it be all
right for me to read one?" sht a^ed
doubtfully.

" Why, yes," said Stanton. " I think
you might read one."

After a few minutes she laid down the
letter without any comment.

*' Would it be all right for me to read
another?" she questioned.

"Why, yes," cried Stanton. "Let's
read them all. Let's read them together.
Only, of course, we must read them in
order."

Almost tenderly he picked them up and

. sorted them out according to their dates.

" Of course," he explained very earnestly,

" of course I wouldn't think of showing

these letters to any one ordinarily; but

189

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

after all, these particular letters represeiit
only a mere business proposition, and
certainly this particular situation must
justify one in making cactraordinary
exceptions/'

One by one he perused the letters hast-
ily and handed them over to Cornelia for
her more careful inspection. No single
associate detail of time or circtonstance
seemed to have eluded his astonishing
memory. Letter by letter, page by page
he annotated : *' That was flie week you
didn't write at all/' or "This was the
stormy, agonizit^, God-forsaken night
when I didn't care whether I lived or
died," or " It was just about that time,
you know, that you ^mubbed me for being
scared about your swimming stunt."

Breathless in the midst of her reading ^
Cemelia looked up and faced him
squarely. "How could any girl — ^write
all that nonsense ? " she gsisptd.

190

"^ MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

It wasn't so much what Stanton an-
swered, as the expression in his eyes that
really startled Cornelia.

^ Nonsense? '* he quoted deliberatingly.
" But I like It;* he said " It*s exacUy
what I like.**

"But I couldn't possibly Have given
you anything like — ^that,'* stammered Cor-
nelia*

•* No, I know you couldnV said Stan-
ton viery gently.

For an instant Cornelia turned and
stared a bit resentfully into his face.
iThen suddenly the very gentleness of his
smile ignited a little answering smile oti
herlips^

*' Oh, you mean,'' she asked witH utt-
imistakable relief; ^oh, you mean that
really after all it wasn't your letter that
jilted me, but my temperament that jilted
you?"

" Exactly/' said Stanton.

I9I;

MOLLY MAK&BELIEVE

Cornelia's whole somber face flamed
tuddenly into umnistakable radiance.

"Oh, that puts an entirely different
light upon the matter/* she exclaimed.
*' Oh, now it doesn't hurt at all 1 "

Rustling to her feet, she began to
smooth the scowly-looking wrinkles out
of her skirt with long even strokes of her
bright-jeweled hands.

** I think I'm rtolly beginning to under-
stand,'* she said pleasantly. " And truly,
absurd as it sounds to say it, I honestly
believe that I care more for you this mo-
ment than I ever cared before, but **

glancing with acute dismay at the clut-
tered suit-case on the floor, "but I
wouldn't marry you now, if we could live
in the finest asylum in the land ! "

Shrugging his shoulders with mirthful
appreciation Stanton proceeded then and
there to re-pack his treasures and end the
interview.

19a

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

Just at the edge of the threshold C(»
nelia's voice called him back.

" Carl/' she protested, " you are look-
ing rather sick. I hope you are going
straight home."

"No, I'm not going straight home,"
said Stanton bluntly. " But here's hoping
that the * longest way round ' will prove
even yet the very shortest possible route
to the particular home that, as yet, doesn't
even exist. I'm going hunting, Cornelia,
hunting for Molly Make-Believe ; and
what's more, I'm going to find her if it
takes me all the rest of mjr natural life j "

i».

«93

»••

DRIVING downtown again with
erexy thoaght in his head, every
plan» every pnrpose, hurtling around and
around in absolute chaos, his roving eyes
lit casually upon the huge sign of a de-
tective bureau that loomed across the
street White as a sheet with the sud-
den new determination that came to him,
and trembling miserably with the very
strength of the determination warring
against the weakness and fatigue of his
body, he dismissed his cab and went
£ climbing up the first narrow, dingy stair-
way that teemed most liable to connect
with the brain behind the sign-board.

It was ahuost bedtime before he came
down the stairs agatn^ yet, *^ I tiiink her
name is Meredith, and I think she's gomt

194

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

to Vermont^ and she has the most won*
derful head of mahogany-colored haifi
that I ever saw in my life/* were the only '
definite clues that he had been able to con-
tribute to the cause.

In the slow, lagging week that followed,
Stanton did not find himself at all pleased
with the particular steps which he had
apparently been obliged to take in order
to ferret out Molly's real name and her
real city address, but the actual audacity
of the situation did not actually reach its
climax until the gentle little quarry had
been literally tracked to Vermont with
detectives fairly baying on her trail like
the melodramatic bloodhounds that pur-
sue " Eliza " across the ice.

** Red-headed party found at Wood-
stock/' the valiant sleuth had wired witK
uiiusual delicacy and caution.

"Denies acquaintance, Boston, every*
thing, positively refuses interview, te;nper

195

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

very bad, sxire it's the party/' the second
message had come.

The very next northward-bound train
found Stanton fretting the interminable
hours away between Boston and Wood-
stock. Across the sparkling snow-smoth-
ered landscape his straining eyes went
plowing on to their unknown destination.
Sometimes the engine pounded louder
than his heart. Sometimes he could not
even seem to hear the grinding of the
brakes above the dreadful throb-throb of
his temples. Sometimes in horrid, shud-
dering chills he huddled into his great fur-
coat and cursed the porter for having a
disposition like a polar bear. Sometimes
almost gasping for breath he went out
and stood on the bleak rear platform of
the last car and watched the pleasant, ice-
cold rails go speeding back to Boston. All
along the journey little absolutely un-
necessary villages kept bobbing up to in>

198

MOLLY MAK£.BELI£VE

pede the progress of the train. All along
the journey innumerable little empty rail-
road-stations, barren as bells robbed of
their own tongues, seemed to lie waiting
— ^waiting for the noisy engine-tongue to
clang them into temporary noise txid life.

Was his quest really almost at an end ?
Was it — ^was it? A thousand vague ap-
prehensions tortured through his mind.

And then, all of a sudden, in the early,
brisk winter twilight, Woodstock — ^hap-
pened I

Climbing out of the train Stanton stood
for a second rubbing his eyes at the final
abruptness and unreality of it all. Wood-
stock! What was it going to mean to
him? Woodstock!

Everybody else on the platform seemed
to be accepting the astonishing geographi-
cal fact with perfect simplicity. Already
along the edge of the platform the quaint,
old-fashioned yeUow stage-coadies set on

197

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

runners were fast filling up with utteil/
serene passengers*

A jog at his elbow made him turn
quickly, and he found himself gazing into
the detective's not ungenial face.

** Say/' said the detective, " were you
going up to the hotel first? Well you'd
better not you'd better not lose any
time. She's leaving town in the morn-
ing/' It was beyond human nature for
the detective man not to nudge Stanton
once in the ribs. "Say," he grinned,
**you sure had better go easy, and not
send in your name or anything." His
grin broadened suddenly in a laugfi.
*' Say," he confided, *' once in a magazine
I read something about a lady's ' piquant
animosity'. That's her! And cutef
Ph, myf"

Five minutes later, Stanton found him-
self lolling back in the quaintest, brightest,
most pumpkin-colored coach of all, glid-

198

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

ing with almost magical smoothness
through the snow-glazed streets of the'
little narrow, valley-towa

"The Meredith homestead ?*• the
driver had queried. " Oh, yes. All right ;
but it's quite a journey. Don't get dis-
couraged.*'

A sense of discouragement regarding
long distances was just at that moment
the most remote sensation in Stanton's
sensibilities. If the railroad journey had
seemed unhappily drawn out, the sleigh-
ride reversed the emotion to the point of
almost telescopic calamity : a stingy, tran-
sient vista of village lights ; a brief, nar-
row, hill-bordered road that looked for all
the world like the aisle of a toy-shop,
flanked on cither side by high-reaching
shelves where miniature house-lights
twinkled cunningly; a sudden stumble of
hoofs into a less-traveled snow-path, and
then, absolutely unavoidable, absolutely

199

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

ipable, an old, white colonial house
with its great solemn elm ^rees stretching
out their long arms protectingly all around
and about it after the blessed habit of a
hundred years.

Nervously, and yet almost reverently,
Stanton went crunching up the snowy
path to the door, knocked resonantly with
a slim, much worn old brass knocker, and
was admitted promptly and hospitably
by *'Mrs. Meredith" herself — Molly's
grandmother evidently, and such a darling
little grandmother, small, like Molly;
quick, like Molly; even young, like Molly,
she appeared to be. Simple, sincere, and
oh, so comfortable — ^like the fine old ma-
hogany furniture and the dull-shining
pewter, and the flickering firelight, that
seemed to be everywhere.

*' Good old stuff I " was Stanton's im-
mediate silent comment on everything in
tight.

200

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE '

It was perfectly evident that tHe little
old lady knew nothing whatsoever abouf ^
Stanton, but it was equally evident thai
she suspected him of being neither a high-
wayman nor a book agent, and was really
sincerely sorry that Molly had " a head-
ache " and would be unable to see him.

" But I've come so far," persisted Stan*
ton. ** All the way from Boston. Is she
very ill? Has she been ill long? "

The little old lady's mind ignored tHe
questions but clung a trifle nervously to
the word Boston.

" Boston ? " her sweet voice quavered.
"Boston? Why you look so nice—
surely you're not that mysterious man
who has been annoying Mollie so dread«
fully these past few days. I told her no
good would ever come of her going to tHe
city."

•'Annoying Molly?" cried Stanton.
"Annoying my Molly? I? Why, it's to

201

MOLLY BIAKE-BELIEVE

pKveot anybody in the whole wide world
from ever annoying her again aboot—
anything, that I've come here now I '* he
persisted rashly. ** And don't you see—
— we had a little misunderstanding
and "

Into the little old lady's ivory dieelc
crept a small, bright, blush-spot

** Oh, you had a little misunderstand-
ing," she repeated softly. ** A little quar-
rel ? Oh, is that why Molly has been cry-
ing so much ever since she came home ? "

Very gently she reached out her tiny,
blue-veined hand, and turned Stanton's
big body around so that the lamp-light
smote him squarely on his face.

"Are you a good boy?** she asked.
*'Are you good enough for — my — ^little
Molly? -

Impulsively Stanton grabbed her small
hands in his big ones, and raised them
very tenderly to his lips.

^S02

"Are yoti a good boy?" i

•I • •

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

*^ Oh, little Molly's little grandmother,'^

he said; '^nobody on the face of this

snow-covered earth is good enongfi for

your Molly, but won't you give me a

chance? Couldn't you please give me a

chance? Now — this minute? Is she so
very ill?''

" No, she's not so very ill, that is, she's

not sick in bed," mused the old lady wav-

cringly. ** She's well enough to be sitting

up in her big chair in front of her open
fire.''

" Big chair— open fire ? " quizzed Stan-
ton. "Then, are there two chairs?" he
asked casually.

" Why, yes," answered the little-grand-
mother in surprise.

"And a mantelpiece with a clock on
k?" he probed.

The little-grandmother's eyes opened
wide and blue with astonishment.

" Yes," she said, " but the clock hasn't
gone for forty years ! "

. 205

MOLLY MAK&BELIEVE

**0h, great!" exclaimed Stanton.
•*Then won't you please — ^please — ^I tell
you it's a case of life or death — won't you
please go right upstairs and sit down in
that extra big chair — and not say a word
CfT anything but just wait till I come?
And of course," he said, " it wouldn't be
good for you to run upstairs, but if you
could hurry just a little I should be so
much obliged."

As soon as he dared, he followed cau-
tiously up the unfamiliar stairs, and
peered inquisitively through the illuminat-
Jag crack of a loosely closed doon

The grandmother as he remembered her
was dressed in some funny soi t of a dull-
ish purple, but peeping out from the
edge of one of the chairs he caught an un«
mistakable flutter of blue.

Catching his breath he tapped gently on
the woodwork.

Roimd the big winged arm of the

206

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

a wonderful, bright atireole of hak
showed suddenly.

" Come in," faltered Molly's perplexed
voice.

All muffled up in his great fur-coat he
pushed the door wide open and entered
boldly.

" It's only Carl/' he said. '* Am I in-
terrupting you ? "

The really dreadful collapsed expression
on Molly's face Stanton did not appear
to notice at all. He merely walked over
to the mantelpiece, and leaning his elbows
on the little cleared space in front of
the clock, stood staring fixedly at the
time-piece which had not changed
its quarter-of-three expression for forty
years*

*'It's almost half-past seven,'* he an*
nounced pointedly, "and I can stay till
|ust eight o'clock."

Only the little grandmother smiled

207

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

Almost immediately : " It's twenty min«
tites of eight now I" he announced se-
verely.

" My, how time flies I ** laughed the lit-
tle grandmother.

When he turned around again the little
grandmother had fled

But Molly did not laugh, as he himself
had laughed on that far-away, dreamlike
evening in his rooms. Instead of laugh-
ter, two great tears welled up in her eyes
and glistened slowly down her flushing
chedcs.

" What If this old clodc hasn't moved a
minute in forty years ? " whispered Stan^
ton passionately, *^ it's such a stingy little
time to eight o'clock— even if the hands
never get there I "

Then turning suddenly to Molly he held
out his great strong arms to her.

•' Oh, Molly, Molly! " he cried out be-
seechingly, " I love you I And I'm free

208

« • •

-•;

^ « t> rf to

It
*^ • t.

• «

MOLLY MAKE-BELIEVE

to love you I Won't you please come to
me?"

Sliding very cautiously out of the big;
deep chair, Molly came walking hesitat-
ingly towards him. Like a little wraith
miraculously tinted with bronze and blue
she stopped and faced him piteously for
a second.

Then suddenly sHe made a little wild
rush into his arms and burrowed her small
frightened face in his shoulder.

'*0h, Carl, Sweetheart!" she cried.
** I can really love you now ? Love you,
Carl — ^love you 1 And not have to be just
Molly Make-Believing any more I '*

THE END.

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